In this paper we argue that an oil price change is likely to have greater impact on real GNP in an environment where oil prices have been stable, than in an environment where oil price movement has been frequent and erratic. An oil price shock variable reflecting both the unanticipated component and the time-varying conditional variance of oil price change (forecasts) is constructed and found to be highly significant in explaining economic growth across different sample periods, even when matched against various economic variables and other functions of oil price. We find that positive normalized shocks have a powerful effect on growth while negative normalized shocks do not.
This paper examines the effect of economic policy uncertainty and its components on firm-level investment. It is found that economic policy uncertainty in interaction with firm-level uncertainty depresses firms' investment decisions. When firms are in doubt about costs of doing business due to possible changes in regulation, cost of health care and taxes, they become more guarded with investment plans. The effect of economic policy uncertainty on firm-level investment is greater for firms with higher firm-level uncertainty and during a recession. News-based policy shock has a significantly negative long-term effect on firms' investment. Federal expenditure forecast interquartile range shock has a significant negative effect in the short-and long-run. Policy uncertainty does not seem to influence the investment decisions of the very largest firms (about 20% of listed firms).
JEL classification: E22, E61, G31
Oil price shocks and economic policy uncertainty are interrelated and influence stock market return. For the U.S. an unanticipated increase in policy uncertainty has a significant negative effect on real stock returns. A positive oil-market specific demand shock (indicating greater concern about future oil supplies) significantly raises economic policy uncertainty and reduces real stock returns. The direct effects of oil shocks on real stock returns are amplified by endogenous policy uncertainty responses. Economic policy uncertainty and oil-market specific demand shock account for 19% and 12% of the longrun variability in real stock returns, respectively. As a robustness check, (domestic) economic policy uncertainty is shown to also significantly influence real stock returns in Europe and in energy-exporting Canada.JEL classification: E44, E60, Q41, Q43
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