US uncertainty shocks, credit, production, and prices: The case of fourteen Latin American countries

The extant literature has examined the impact of United States’ uncertainty shocks on developed and large emerging market economies. However, this research has not accounted for global cycles in production, credit, and prices, which can influence the estimates of the effects of US uncertainty on the rest of the world. The effects of uncertainty in highly indebted emerging open economies, which depend heavily on US financial and real conditions, have not been studied. We analyze the effects of uncertainty shocks on 14 Latin American countries (LACs) of various sizes and various levels of dependence on US financial and real flows. Latin America is a highly indebted and heterogeneous region that is particularly sensitive to US economic and financial conditions, particularly uncertainty, in its various dimensions: real, financial, and policy related (including monetary policy). Our results show that the effects of real and financial uncertainty are more significant and long lasting than the effects of economic and monetary policy uncertainty, as measured by the use of uncertainty-related key words. All forms of uncertainty have a larger and more persistent impact on the gross domestic product of countries than the impact on credit and prices. In general, uncertainty in the US depresses economic activity in Latin America, although there is significant heterogeneity in the effects, which warrants detailed analysis of individual countries when considering policy implementation and portfolio diversification.