IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfel/y2012isep17n2012-28.html

Uncertainty, unemployment, and inflation

Author

Abstract

Heightened uncertainty acts like a decline in aggregate demand because it depresses economic activity and holds down inflation. Policymakers typically try to counter uncertainty's economic effects by easing the stance of monetary policy. But, in the recent recession and recovery, nominal interest rates have been near zero and couldn't be lowered further. Consequently, uncertainty has reduced economic activity more than in previous recessions. Higher uncertainty is estimated to have lifted the U.S. unemployment rate by at least one percentage point since early 2008.

Suggested Citation

  • Sylvain Leduc & Zheng Liu, 2012. "Uncertainty, unemployment, and inflation," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue sep17.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:y:2012:i:sep17:n:2012-28
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2012/el2012-28.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2012/el2012-28.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leduc, Sylvain & Liu, Zheng, 2016. "Uncertainty shocks are aggregate demand shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 20-35.
    2. Leduc, Sylvain & Sill, Keith & Stark, Tom, 2007. "Self-fulfilling expectations and the inflation of the 1970s: Evidence from the Livingston Survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 433-459, March.
    3. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    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. PINSHI, Christian P. & MALATA, Alain, 2020. "Canal d’incertitude de la COVID-19 : Quelles stratégies et tactiques pour la politique monétaire ? [COVID-19 Uncertainty Channel: What Strategies and Tactics for Monetary Policy?]," MPRA Paper 109313, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Zheng Liu & Andrew Tai, 2016. "Slow Credit Recovery and Excess Returns on Capital," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    3. John C. Williams, 2013. "The economy and monetary policy in uncertain times," Speech 115, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    4. Manuel Flores & Melchor Fernández & Yolanda Pena-Boquete, 2020. "The impact of health on wages: evidence from Europe before and during the Great Recession," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 319-346.
    5. Maritta Paloviita & Matti Viren, 2014. "Inflation and output growth uncertainty in individual survey expectations," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 69-81, February.
    6. Saltzman, Bennett & Yung, Julieta, 2018. "A machine learning approach to identifying different types of uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 58-62.
    7. Mathy, Gabriel & Ziebarth, Nicolas L., 2017. "How Much Does Political Uncertainty Matter? The Case of Louisiana under Huey Long," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 90-126, March.
    8. Houari, Oussama, 2022. "Uncertainty shocks and business cycles in the US: New insights from the last three decades," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    9. Brunetti, Celso & Harris, Jeffrey H. & Mankad, Shawn & Michailidis, George, 2019. "Interconnectedness in the interbank market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 520-538.
    10. repec:fip:fedfsp:y:2013:i:jan.14 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Anasuya Haldar & Narayan Sethi, 2022. "The Economic Effects of Covid-19 Mitigation Policies on Unemployment and Economic Policy Uncertainty," Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking, Bank Indonesia, vol. 25(Special I), pages 61-84, March.
    12. Suleyman Kasal & Sebnem Tosunoglu, 2022. "Effects of Fiscal Policy Uncertainty on Turkish Economy," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2022(6), pages 538-566.
    13. Tajaddini, Reza & Gholipour, Hassan F., 2021. "Economic uncertainty and business formation: A cross-country analysis," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 16(C).
    14. Stefan Schiman & Atanas Pekanov, 2020. "Uncertainty in the Euro Area During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 66708.
    15. Alain MALATA & Christian PINSHI, 2020. "Fading The Effects Of Coronavirus With Monetary Policy," Theoretical and Practical Research in the Economic Fields, ASERS Publishing, vol. 11(2), pages 105-110.
    16. Vivek Ghosal & Yang Ye, 2015. "Uncertainty and the employment dynamics of small and large businesses," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 529-558, March.
    17. Brunetti, Celso & Büyükşahin, Bahattin & Harris, Jeffrey H., 2016. "Speculators, Prices, and Market Volatility," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(5), pages 1545-1574, October.

    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. Arce-Alfaro, Gabriel & Blagov, Boris, 2021. "Monetary policy uncertainty and inflation expectations," Ruhr Economic Papers 899, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    2. Libo Yin & Liyan Han, 2014. "Spillovers of macroeconomic uncertainty among major economies," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(13), pages 938-944, September.
    3. Idriss Fontaine, 2021. "Uncertainty and Labour Force Participation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(2), pages 437-471, April.
    4. Binge, Laurie H. & Boshoff, Willem H., 2020. "Economic uncertainty in South Africa," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 113-131.
    5. Karamysheva, Madina, 2022. "How do fiscal adjustments work? An empirical investigation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    6. Ahmed, M. Iqbal & Cassou, Steven P., 2021. "Asymmetries in the effects of unemployment expectation shocks as monetary policy shifts with economic conditions," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    7. Dario Bonciani & Joonseok Jason Oh, 2019. "The long-run effects of uncertainty shocks," Bank of England Staff Working Paper series 802, Bank of England.
    8. Miescu, Mirela & Rossi, Raffaele, 2021. "COVID-19-induced shocks and uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    9. Alessandri, Piergiorgio & Mumtaz, Haroon, 2019. "Financial regimes and uncertainty shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 31-46.
    10. Caggiano, Giovanni & Castelnuovo, Efrem & Kima, Richard, 2020. "The global effects of Covid-19-induced uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    11. Abakah, Emmanuel Joel Aikins & Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Gil-Alana, Luis Alberiko, 2021. "Economic policy uncertainty: Persistence and cross-country linkages," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    12. Bachmann, Rüdiger & Born, Benjamin & Elstner, Steffen & Grimme, Christian, 2019. "Time-varying business volatility and the price setting of firms," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 82-99.
    13. Comunale, Mariarosaria & Nguyen, Anh Dinh Minh, 2025. "A comprehensive MacroEconomic uncertainty measure for the euro area and its implications to COVID-19," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    14. Becard, Yvan & Gauthier, David, 2023. "Banks, nonbanks, and business cycles," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    15. Pascal Goemans, 2022. "Historical evidence for larger government spending multipliers in uncertain times than in slumps," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(3), pages 1164-1185, July.
    16. Isoré, Marlène & Szczerbowicz, Urszula, 2017. "Disaster risk and preference shifts in a New Keynesian model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 97-125.
    17. Falconio, Andrea & Manganelli, Simone, 2025. "Financial conditions, business cycle fluctuations and growth-at-risk," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    18. Bandi, Federico M. & Bretscher, Lorenzo & Tamoni, Andrea, 2023. "Return predictability with endogenous growth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(3).
    19. Okan Akarsu & Huzeyfe Torun, 2025. "Firms Inflation Expectations During the Phases of Inflation," CBT Research Notes in Economics 2519, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    20. Deniz AYTAÇ, 2023. "Global Economic Policy Uncertainty and Energy Prices: A Markov-Switching VAR Approach," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(3), pages 40-61, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:fip:fedfel:y:2012:i:sep17:n:2012-28. 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: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.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.