IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gwc/wpaper/2021-004.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sentiment and Uncertainty about Regulation

Author

Listed:
  • Tara M. Sinclair

    (The George Washington University)

  • Zhoudan Xie

    (The George Washington University)

Abstract

Regulatory policy can create economic and social benets, but poorly designed or excessive regulation may generate substantial adverse effects on the economy. In this paper, we present measures of sentiment and uncertainty about regulation in the U.S. over time and examine their relationships with macroeconomic performance. We construct the measures using lexicon-based sentiment analysis of an original news corpus, which covers 493,418 news articles related to regulation from seven leading U.S. newspapers. As a result, we build monthly indexes of sentiment and uncertainty about regulation and categorical indexes for 14 regulatory policy areas from January 1985 to August 2020. Impulse response functions indicate that a negative shock to sentiment about regulation is associated with large, persistent drops in future output and employment, while increased regulatory uncertainty overall reduces output and employment temporarily. These results suggest that sentiment about regulation plays a more important economic role than uncertainty about regulation. Furthermore, economic outcomes are particularly sensitive to sentiment around transportation regulation and to uncertainty around labor regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Tara M. Sinclair & Zhoudan Xie, 2021. "Sentiment and Uncertainty about Regulation," Working Papers 2021-004, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    • Handle: RePEc:gwc:wpaper:2021-004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.gwu.edu/~forcpgm/2021-004.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2021
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.
    2. Caggiano, Giovanni & Castelnuovo, Efrem & Pellegrino, Giovanni, 2017. "Estimating the real effects of uncertainty shocks at the Zero Lower Bound," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 257-272.
    3. Hassett, Kevin A & Metcalf, Gilbert E, 1999. "Investment with Uncertain Tax Policy: Does Random Tax Policy Discourage Investment?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(457), pages 372-393, July.
    4. Caldara, Dario & Iacoviello, Matteo & Molligo, Patrick & Prestipino, Andrea & Raffo, Andrea, 2020. "The economic effects of trade policy uncertainty," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 38-59.
    5. Winston Harrington & Richard D. Morgenstern & Peter Nelson, 2000. "On the accuracy of regulatory cost estimates," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 297-322.
    6. Bentley Coffey & Patrick McLaughlin & Pietro Peretto, 2020. "The Cumulative Cost of Regulations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 38, pages 1-21, October.
    7. Carroll, Christopher D & Fuhrer, Jeffrey C & Wilcox, David W, 1994. "Does Consumer Sentiment Forecast Household Spending? If So, Why?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1397-1408, December.
    8. Nicholas Bloom & Max Floetotto & Nir Jaimovich & Itay Saporta†Eksten & Stephen J. Terry, 2018. "Really Uncertain Business Cycles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(3), pages 1031-1065, May.
    9. John Dawson & John Seater, 2013. "Federal regulation and aggregate economic growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 137-177, June.
    10. Lubos Pástor & Pietro Veronesi, 2012. "Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(4), pages 1219-1264, August.
    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. Robert J. Shiller, 2017. "Narrative Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 967-1004, April.
    13. Arbatli Saxegaard, Elif C. & Davis, Steven J. & Ito, Arata & Miake, Naoko, 2022. "Policy uncertainty in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    14. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2017_006 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Matthew Gentzkow & Bryan Kelly & Matt Taddy, 2019. "Text as Data," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(3), pages 535-574, September.
    16. Jess Benhabib & Mark M Spiegel, 2019. "Sentiments and Economic Activity: Evidence from US States," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(618), pages 715-733.
    17. Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Policy uncertainty and private investment in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 229-242, October.
    18. Kevin A. Hassett, 1999. "Tax Policy and Investment," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 53049, September.
    19. Shapiro, Adam Hale & Sudhof, Moritz & Wilson, Daniel J., 2022. "Measuring news sentiment," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 221-243.
    20. Jason Bram & Sydney C. Ludvigson, 1998. "Does consumer confidence forecast household expenditure? a sentiment index horse race," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 4(Jun), pages 59-78.
    21. Julio, Brandon & Yook, Youngsuk, 2016. "Policy uncertainty, irreversibility, and cross-border flows of capital," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 13-26.
    22. Susan E. Dudley, 2017. "Retrospective evaluation of chemical regulations," OECD Environment Working Papers 118, OECD Publishing.
    23. Nataliia Ostapenko, 2020. "Macroeconomic expectations: news sentiment analysis," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2020-5, Bank of Estonia, revised 13 Aug 2020.
    24. Charles W. Calomiris & Harry Mamaysky & Ruoke Yang, 2020. "Measuring the Cost of Regulation: A Text-Based Approach," NBER Working Papers 26856, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. Eads, George C, 1980. "Regulation and Technical Change: Some Largely Unexplored Influences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(2), pages 50-54, May.
    26. Casey B. Mulligan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Extent of the Market and the Supply of Regulation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(4), pages 1445-1473.
    27. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2011. "When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis, Dictionaries, and 10‐Ks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 35-65, February.
    28. Huseyin Gulen & Mihai Ion, 2016. "Editor's Choice Policy Uncertainty and Corporate Investment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(3), pages 523-564.
    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. Hua Cheng & Kishore Gawande & Steven Ongena & Shusen Qi, 2020. "Get beyond policy uncertainty: Evidence from political connections," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 20-77, Swiss Finance Institute.
    2. Ansgar Belke & Dominik Kronen, 2017. "The impact of uncertainty on macro variables - An SVAR-based empirical analysis for EU countries," ROME Working Papers 201708, ROME Network.
    3. Bree J. Lang & Pratish Patel, 2023. "Funding infrastructure under uncertainty: evidence from tax credit prices," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(3), pages 635-677, June.
    4. Kronen Dominik & Belke Ansgar, 2017. "The Impact of Policy Uncertainty on Macro Variables – An SVAR-Based Empirical Analysis for EU Countries," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 68(2), pages 93-116, August.
    5. Arbatli Saxegaard, Elif C. & Davis, Steven J. & Ito, Arata & Miake, Naoko, 2022. "Policy uncertainty in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    6. Steven J. Davis, 2019. "Rising Policy Uncertainty," NBER Working Papers 26243, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Shapiro, Adam Hale & Sudhof, Moritz & Wilson, Daniel J., 2022. "Measuring news sentiment," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 221-243.
    8. Baker, Scott R. & Davis, Steven J. & Levy, Jeffrey A., 2022. "State-level economic policy uncertainty," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 81-99.
    9. Chan, Kam Fong & Gray, Philip & Gray, Stephen & Zhong, Angel, 2020. "Political uncertainty, market anomalies and Presidential honeymoons," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    10. Paudyal, Krishna & Thapa, Chandra & Koirala, Santosh & Aldhawyan, Sulaiman, 2021. "Economic policy uncertainty and cross-border mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    11. Xu, Zhaoxia, 2020. "Economic policy uncertainty, cost of capital, and corporate innovation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    12. Han, Liyan & Liu, Yang & Yin, Libo, 2019. "Uncertainty and currency performance: A quantile-on-quantile approach," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 702-729.
    13. Cezar, Rafael & Gigout, Timothée & Tripier, Fabien, 2020. "Cross-border investments and uncertainty: Firm-level evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    14. Ahmed Ali & Granberg Mark & Uddin Gazi Salah & Troster Victor, 2022. "Asymmetric dynamics between uncertainty and unemployment flows in the United States," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 26(1), pages 155-172, February.
    15. Chahine, Salim & Daher, Mai & Saade, Samer, 2021. "Doing good in periods of high uncertainty: Economic policy uncertainty, corporate social responsibility, and analyst forecast error," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    16. 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.
    17. Costantini, Mauro & Sousa, Ricardo M., 2022. "What uncertainty does to euro area sovereign bond markets: Flight to safety and flight to quality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    18. Long, Shaobo & Pei, Hongxia & Tian, Hao & Li, Fangfang, 2021. "Asymmetric impacts of economic policy uncertainty, capital cost, and raw material cost on China’s investment," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 129-144.
    19. Gigout, Timothee, 2019. "Firm dynamics in an global and uncertain economy," MPRA Paper 96569, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 16 Oct 2019.
    20. Kang, Wensheng & Lee, Kiseok & Ratti, Ronald A., 2014. "Economic policy uncertainty and firm-level investment," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 39(PA), pages 42-53.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Regulation; text analysis; NLP; sentiment analysis; uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
    • K2 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:gwc:wpaper:2021-004. 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: GW Economics Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/pfgwuus.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.