IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/22079.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Uncertainty of Firms' Medium-term Outlook during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • MORIKAWA Masayuki

Abstract

This study, based on original surveys conducted before and after the COVID-19 outbreak in Japan, documents firms’ medium-term outlook and its uncertainty. The results show that, the uncertainty related to the outlooks of firms, measured as a subjective confidence interval of their point forecasts, increased substantially at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Uncertainty over the macroeconomic outlook declined slightly by the end of 2021, but uncertainty over the firms’ sales outlook remained high. Second, uncertainty over the firms’ sales outlook is significantly related to uncertainty over the macroeconomic outlook, even when firm fixed effects are controlled. Third, forecasts regarding the end of the COVID-19 pandemic are highly dispersed. The expectation regarding the duration of the pandemic is correlated with the macroeconomic outlook and its uncertainty, but correlations with firms’ sales outlook and its uncertainty are not observed.

Suggested Citation

  • MORIKAWA Masayuki, 2022. "Uncertainty of Firms' Medium-term Outlook during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Discussion papers 22079, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:22079
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/22e079.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Saten Kumar, 2018. "How Do Firms Form Their Expectations? New Survey Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2671-2713, September.
    2. Miescu, Mirela & Rossi, Raffaele, 2021. "COVID-19-induced shocks and uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    3. Charles F. Manski, 2018. "Survey Measurement of Probabilistic Macroeconomic Expectations: Progress and Promise," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 411-471.
    4. Kevin Moran & Dalibor Stevanovic & Adam Kader Touré, 2022. "Macroeconomic uncertainty and the COVID‐19 pandemic: Measure and impacts on the Canadian economy," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(S1), pages 379-405, February.
    5. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Weber, Michael, 2020. "The Cost of the COVID-19 Crisis: Lockdowns, Macroeconomic Expectations, and Consumer Spending," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt4jn1x65h, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    6. Dietrich, Alexander M. & Kuester, Keith & Müller, Gernot J. & Schoenle, Raphael, 2022. "News and uncertainty about COVID-19: Survey evidence and short-run economic impact," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(S), pages 35-51.
    7. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis & Stephen J. Terry, 2020. "COVID-Induced Economic Uncertainty," NBER Working Papers 26983, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Saten Kumar & Jane Ryngaert, 2021. "Do You Know that I Know that You Know…? Higher-Order Beliefs in Survey Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1387-1446.
    9. Caggiano, Giovanni & Castelnuovo, Efrem & Kima, Richard, 2020. "The global effects of Covid-19-induced uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    10. Cheng Chen & Tatsuro Senga & Hongyong Zhang, 2021. "Measuring business-level expectations and uncertainty: survey evidence and the COVID-19 pandemic," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 72(3), pages 509-532, July.
    11. Masayuki Morikawa, 2016. "What Types of Policy Uncertainties Matter for Business?," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(5), pages 527-540, December.
    12. Buchheim Lukas & Krolage Carla & Link Sebastian, 2022. "Sudden stop: When did firms anticipate the potential consequences of COVID-19?," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 23(1), pages 79-119, February.
    13. Brent Meyer & Emil Mihaylov & Jose Maria Barrero & Steven J. Davis & David Altig & Nicholas Bloom, 2022. "Pandemic-Era Uncertainty," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-14, July.
    14. Niels J. Gormsen & Ralph S. J. Koijen & Ian W. R. Martin, 2021. "Implied Dividend Volatility and Expected Growth," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 361-365, May.
    15. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2020_011 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. MORIKAWA Masayuki, 2022. "Firms' Knightian Uncertainty during the COVID-19 Crisis," Discussion papers 22089, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    2. MORIKAWA Masayuki, 2021. "Uncertainty of Firms' Economic Outlook During the COVID-19 Crisis," Discussion papers 21042, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    3. Miescu, Mirela & Rossi, Raffaele, 2021. "COVID-19-induced shocks and uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    4. Dräger, Lena & Lamla, Michael J., 2023. "Consumers' Macroeconomic Expectations," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-714, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    5. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Michael Weber, 2022. "Does Policy Communication during COVID Work?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 18(1), pages 3-39, March.
    6. Morita, Hiroshi & Ono, Taiki, 2022. "COVID-19 Uncertainty Index in Japan: Newspaper-Based Measures and Economic Activities," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-116, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    7. MORIKAWA Masayuki, 2019. "Firms' Subjective Uncertainty and Forecast Errors," Discussion papers 19055, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    8. Dietrich, Alexander M. & Kuester, Keith & Müller, Gernot J. & Schoenle, Raphael, 2022. "News and uncertainty about COVID-19: Survey evidence and short-run economic impact," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(S), pages 35-51.
    9. Wright, Austin L. & Sonin, Konstantin & Driscoll, Jesse & Wilson, Jarnickae, 2020. "Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 544-554.
    10. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2021_010 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Link, Sebastian & Peichl, Andreas & Roth, Christopher & Wohlfart, Johannes, 2023. "Information frictions among firms and households," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 99-115.
    12. Afees A. Salisu & Idris A. Adediran & Rangan Gupta, 2021. "A Note on the COVID-19 Shock and Real GDP in Emerging Economies: A Counterfactual Analysis from the Threshold-Augmented Global Vector Autoregressive Model," Working Papers 202149, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    13. Markus Brueckner & Joaquin Vespignani, 2021. "COVID‐19 Infections and the Performance of the Stock Market: An Empirical Analysis for Australia," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 40(3), pages 173-193, September.
    14. Peng-Fei Dai & Xiong Xiong & Zhifeng Liu & Toan Luu Duc Huynh & Jianjun Sun, 2021. "Preventing crash in stock market: The role of economic policy uncertainty during COVID-19," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-15, December.
    15. Xu, Yingying & Lien, Donald, 2022. "Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on price Co-movements in China," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    16. Dovern, Jonas & Müller, Lena Sophia & Wohlrabe, Klaus, 2020. "How Do Firms Form Expectations of Aggregate Growth? New Evidence from a Large-scale Business Survey," Working Papers 15, German Research Foundation's Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour", Humboldt University Berlin.
    17. Bernardo Candia & Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2021. "The Inflation Expectations of U.S. Firms: Evidence from a new survey," NBER Working Papers 28836, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2020. "How Do Expectations about the Macroeconomy Affect Personal Expectations and Behavior?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(4), pages 731-748, October.
    19. Meyer, Brent H. & Prescott, Brian & Sheng, Xuguang Simon, 2022. "The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business expectations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 529-544.
    20. Barrero, Jose Maria, 2022. "The micro and macro of managerial beliefs," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(2), pages 640-667.
    21. Klose, Jens & Tillmann, Peter, 2022. "The Real and Financial Impact of COVID-19 Around the World," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264030, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    More about this item

    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:eti:dpaper:22079. 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: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.html .

    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.