IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v189y2021icp547-566.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring macroeconomic disagreement – A mixed frequency approach

Author

Listed:
  • Sheen, Jeffrey
  • Wang, Ben Zhe

Abstract

We propose a new measure of macroeconomic disagreement, using dispersions of forecasts of a wide range of financial, activity and inflation variables from both household and professional surveys at various frequencies. With a mixed-frequency state-space model, we construct macroeconomic disagreement estimates of the one-year ahead expected state of the economy. Impulse responses show disagreement shocks lead to a contraction in economic activity.

Suggested Citation

  • Sheen, Jeffrey & Wang, Ben Zhe, 2021. "Measuring macroeconomic disagreement – A mixed frequency approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 547-566.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:189:y:2021:i:c:p:547-566
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.07.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121002997
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.07.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.
    2. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    3. Sébastien Fries & Jean‐Stéphane Mésonnier & Sarah Mouabbi & Jean‐Paul Renne, 2018. "National natural rates of interest and the single monetary policy in the euro area," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(6), pages 763-779, September.
    4. Olesya Grishchenko & Sarah Mouabbi & Jean‐Paul Renne, 2019. "Measuring Inflation Anchoring and Uncertainty: A U.S. and Euro Area Comparison," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(5), pages 1053-1096, August.
    5. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis & Justin Wolfers, 2004. "Disagreement about Inflation Expectations," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003, Volume 18, pages 209-270, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Caggiano, Giovanni & Castelnuovo, Efrem & Groshenny, Nicolas, 2014. "Uncertainty shocks and unemployment dynamics in U.S. recessions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 78-92.
    7. Soojin Jo & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2019. "Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 436-446, July.
    8. Bekaert, Geert & Hoerova, Marie & Lo Duca, Marco, 2013. "Risk, uncertainty and monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 771-788.
    9. William A. Branch, 2004. "The Theory of Rationally Heterogeneous Expectations: Evidence from Survey Data on Inflation Expectations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 592-621, July.
    10. Barbara Rossi & Tatevik Sekhposyan, 2015. "Macroeconomic Uncertainty Indices Based on Nowcast and Forecast Error Distributions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 650-655, May.
    11. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    12. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 2005. "Nominal Rigidities and the Dynamic Effects of a Shock to Monetary Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 1-45, February.
    13. Ben S. Bernanke, 1983. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Cyclical Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(1), pages 85-106.
    14. Aruoba, S. BoraÄŸan & Diebold, Francis X. & Scotti, Chiara, 2009. "Real-Time Measurement of Business Conditions," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 417-427.
    15. Joshua Abel & Robert Rich & Joseph Song & Joseph Tracy, 2016. "The Measurement and Behavior of Uncertainty: Evidence from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 533-550, April.
    16. Kyle Jurado & Sydney C. Ludvigson & Serena Ng, 2015. "Measuring Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1177-1216, March.
    17. Giordani, Paolo & Soderlind, Paul, 2003. "Inflation forecast uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 1037-1059, December.
    18. Scotti, Chiara, 2016. "Surprise and uncertainty indexes: Real-time aggregation of real-activity macro-surprises," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-19.
    19. Kajal Lahiri & Xuguang Sheng, 2010. "Measuring forecast uncertainty by disagreement: The missing link," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 514-538.
    20. R?diger Bachmann & Steffen Elstner & Eric R. Sims, 2013. "Uncertainty and Economic Activity: Evidence from Business Survey Data," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 217-249, April.
    21. Danny Pfeffermann & Richard Tiller, 2005. "Bootstrap Approximation to Prediction MSE for State–Space Models with Estimated Parameters," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(6), pages 893-916, November.
    22. Andrea Carriero & Sarah Mouabbi & Elisabetta Vangelista, 2018. "UK term structure decompositions at the zero lower bound," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(5), pages 643-661, August.
    23. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    24. Sébastien Fries & Jean‐Stéphane Mésonnier & Sarah Mouabbi & Jean‐Paul Renne, 2018. "National natural rates of interest and the single monetary policy in the euro area," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(6), pages 763-779, September.
    25. Gianna Boero & Jeremy Smith & KennethF. Wallis, 2008. "Uncertainty and Disagreement in Economic Prediction: The Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 1107-1127, July.
    26. Gianna Boero & Jeremy Smith & Kenneth F. Wallis, 2008. "Uncertainty and Disagreement in Economic Prediction: The Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 1107-1127, July.
    27. Mardi Dungey & Vitali Alexeev & Jing Tian & Jeffrey Sheen & Stefan Trück & Ben Zhe Wang, 2015. "Daily Business and External Condition Indices for the Australian Economy," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 91, pages 38-53, June.
    28. Lahiri, Kajal & Sheng, Xuguang, 2010. "Learning and heterogeneity in GDP and inflation forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 265-292, April.
    29. Barbara Rossi & Tatevik Sekhposyan, 2017. "Macroeconomic uncertainty indices for the Euro Area and its individual member countries," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 41-62, August.
    30. Das, Abhiman & Lahiri, Kajal & Zhao, Yongchen, 2019. "Inflation expectations in India: Learning from household tendency surveys," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 980-993.
    31. Lutz Kilian, 1998. "Small-Sample Confidence Intervals For Impulse Response Functions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(2), pages 218-230, May.
    32. Leduc, Sylvain & Liu, Zheng, 2016. "Uncertainty shocks are aggregate demand shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 20-35.
    33. Gianna Boero & Jeremy Smith & Kenneth F. Wallis, 2015. "The Measurement and Characteristics of Professional Forecasters' Uncertainty," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1029-1046, November.
    34. Robert Rich & Joseph Tracy, 2010. "The Relationships among Expected Inflation, Disagreement, and Uncertainty: Evidence from Matched Point and Density Forecasts," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(1), pages 200-207, February.
    35. Zarnowitz, Victor & Lambros, Louis A, 1987. "Consensus and Uncertainty in Economic Prediction," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 591-621, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tong, Chen & Huang, Zhuo & Wang, Tianyi & Zhang, Cong, 2023. "The effects of economic uncertainty on financial volatility: A comprehensive investigation," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 369-389.
    2. Yang, Cheng-Hu & Wang, Hai-Tang & Ma, Xin & Talluri, Srinivas, 2023. "A data-driven newsvendor problem: A high-dimensional and mixed-frequency method," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:zbw:bofrdp:037 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Ambrocio, Gene, 2017. "The real effects of overconfidence and fundamental uncertainty shocks," Research Discussion Papers 37/2017, Bank of Finland.
    3. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2017_037 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Istrefi, Klodiana & Mouabbi, Sarah, 2018. "Subjective interest rate uncertainty and the macroeconomy: A cross-country analysis," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 296-313.
    5. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2022_005 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Ambrocio, Gene, 2020. "Inflationary household uncertainty shocks," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 5/2020, Bank of Finland.
    7. Liu, Yang & Sheng, Xuguang Simon, 2019. "The measurement and transmission of macroeconomic uncertainty: Evidence from the U.S. and BRIC countries," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 967-979.
    8. Ambrocio, Gene, 2020. "Inflationary household uncertainty shocks," Research Discussion Papers 5/2020, Bank of Finland.
    9. Luca Rossi, 2020. "Indicators of uncertainty: a brief user’s guide," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 564, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    10. Himounet, Nicolas, 2022. "Searching the nature of uncertainty: Macroeconomic and financial risks VS geopolitical and pandemic risks," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 1-31.
    11. Beckmann, Joscha & Davidson, Sharada Nia & Koop, Gary & Schüssler, Rainer, 2023. "Cross-country uncertainty spillovers: Evidence from international survey data," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    12. Istrefi, Klodiana & Mouabbi, Sarah, 2018. "Subjective interest rate uncertainty and the macroeconomy: A cross-country analysis," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 296-313.
    13. Danilo Cascaldi-Garcia & Cisil Sarisoy & Juan M. Londono & Bo Sun & Deepa D. Datta & Thiago Ferreira & Olesya Grishchenko & Mohammad R. Jahan-Parvar & Francesca Loria & Sai Ma & Marius Rodriguez & Ilk, 2023. "What Is Certain about Uncertainty?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 624-654, June.
    14. Basile, Roberto & Girardi, Alessandro, 2018. "Uncertainty and Business Cycle: A Review of the Literature and Some Evidence from the Spanish Economy/Incertidumbre y Ciclo Empresarial: Revisión de la literatura y evidencia en la economía española," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 36, pages 235-250, Enero.
    15. Dibiasi, Andreas & Sarferaz, Samad, 2023. "Measuring macroeconomic uncertainty: A cross-country analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    16. Glas, Alexander, 2020. "Five dimensions of the uncertainty–disagreement linkage," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 607-627.
    17. Nicolas Himounet & Francisco Serranito & Julien Vauday, 2021. "Uncertainty is bad for Business. Really?," Working Papers 2021.03, International Network for Economic Research - INFER.
    18. Ozturk, Ezgi O. & Sheng, Xuguang Simon, 2018. "Measuring global and country-specific uncertainty," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 276-295.
    19. Oscar Claveria, 2021. "Uncertainty indicators based on expectations of business and consumer surveys," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 483-505, May.
    20. Maria Elena Bontempi & Michele Frigeri & Roberto Golinelli & Matteo Squadrani, 2021. "EURQ: A New Web Search‐based Uncertainty Index," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(352), pages 969-1015, October.
    21. Oscar Claveria & Petar Sorić, 2023. "Labour market uncertainty after the irruption of COVID-19," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(4), pages 1897-1945, April.
    22. Tosapol Apaitan & Pongsak Luangaram & Pym Manopimoke, 2022. "Uncertainty in an emerging market economy: evidence from Thailand," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(3), pages 933-989, March.
    23. Michael Ryan, 2020. "An Anchor in Stormy Seas: Does Reforming Economic Institutions Reduce Uncertainty? Evidence from New Zealand," Working Papers in Economics 20/11, University of Waikato.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Macroeconomic disagreement; Economic uncertainty; Survey data; Mixed frequency; State-space model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • E66 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General Outlook and Conditions
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:189:y:2021:i:c:p:547-566. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.