IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/3561.html

Why the Link Between Volatility and Growth is Both Positive and Negative

Author

Listed:
  • Imbs, Jean

Abstract

I revisit the relationship between growth and volatility in two different disaggregated datasets. I confirm that growth and volatility are negatively related across countries, but show that the relation reverses itself across sectors. This phenomenon, sometimes called the ?Simpson?s fallacy?, has a natural interpretation in the present context: it is the component of aggregate volatility that is common across sectors that correlates negatively with aggregate growth. Furthermore, while investment and volatility are unrelated in the aggregate, sectoral investment is shown to be more intense in volatile activities, as if the return to capital were higher there. These results call for a distinction between macroeconomic and sectoral volatilities, not unlike that between macroeconomics, where volatility often means policy-driven instability, and finance, where volatility reflects risk, and thus high returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Imbs, Jean, 2002. "Why the Link Between Volatility and Growth is Both Positive and Negative," CEPR Discussion Papers 3561, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3561
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP3561
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Imbs & Romain Wacziarg, 2003. "Stages of Diversification," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 63-86, March.
    2. Ramey, Garey & Ramey, Valerie A, 1995. "Cross-Country Evidence on the Link between Volatility and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1138-1151, December.
    3. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1998. "Financial Dependence and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 559-586, June.
    4. Martin, Philippe & Ann Rogers, Carol, 2000. "Long-term growth and short-term economic instability," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 359-381, February.
    5. Carol Ann Rogers & Philippe Martin, 1997. "Stabilization Policy, Growth and Learning by Doing," Post-Print hal-03416319, HAL.
    6. Martin, Philippe & Rogers, Carol Ann, 1997. "Stabilization Policy, Learning-by-Doing, and Economic Growth," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 49(2), pages 152-166, April.
    7. Pindyck, Robert S, 1991. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Investment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 1110-1148, September.
    8. Ruth A. Judson & Ann L. Owen, "undated". "Estimating Dynamic Panel Data Models: A Practical Guide for Macroeconomists," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1997-03, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 10 Dec 2019.
    9. Jaume Ventura, 1997. "Growth and Interdependence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 57-84.
    10. Ricardo J. Caballero & Mohamad L. Hammour, 2000. "Creative Destruction and Development: Institutions, Crises, and Restructuring," NBER Working Papers 7849, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Andrew B Bernard & J Bradford Jensen, 2001. "Who Dies? International Trade, Market Structure, and Industrial Restructuring," Working Papers 01-04, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    12. Caballero, Ricardo J & Hammour, Mohamad L, 1994. "The Cleansing Effect of Recessions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1350-1368, December.
    13. Bean, Charles R., 1990. "Endogenous growth and the procyclical behaviour of productivity," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(2-3), pages 355-363, May.
    14. Basu, Susanto & Fernald, John G, 1997. "Returns to Scale in U.S. Production: Estimates and Implications," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 249-283, April.
    15. Aghion, P. & Saint-Paul, G., 1991. "On The Virtue of Bad Times: An Analysis of the Interaction Between Economic Fluctuations and Productivity Growth," DELTA Working Papers 91-23, DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure).
    16. Fabio Canova & Albert Marcet, 1995. "The poor stay poor: Non-convergence across countries and regions," Economics Working Papers 137, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jun 1999.
    17. Alesina, Alberto & Özler, Sule & Roubini, Nouriel & Swagel, Phillip, 1996. "Political Instability and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 189-211, June.
    18. Caselli, Francesco & Esquivel, Gerardo & Lefort, Fernando, 1996. "Reopening the Convergence Debate: A New Look at Cross-Country Growth Empirics," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 363-389, September.
    19. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    20. Kristin J. Forbes, 2000. "A Reassessment of the Relationship between Inequality and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 869-887, September.
    21. Garey Ramey & Valerie A. Ramey, 1991. "Technology Commitment and the Cost of Economic Fluctuations," NBER Working Papers 3755, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Burnside, A. Craig & Eichenbaum, Martin S. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1996. "Sectoral Solow residuals," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 861-869, April.
    23. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
    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. Imbs, Jean, 2007. "Growth and volatility," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 1848-1862, October.
    2. Ghulam MOHEY-UD-DIN* & Muhammad Wasif SIDDIQI**, 2017. "GDP FLUCTUATIONS AND LONG-RUN ECONOMIC GROWTH: A Study of Selected South Asian Countries," Pakistan Journal of Applied Economics, Applied Economics Research Centre, vol. 27(1), pages 41-66.
    3. Valerie Cerra & Sweta Chaman Saxena, 2008. "Growth Dynamics: The Myth of Economic Recovery," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 439-457, March.
    4. Martin, Philippe & Ann Rogers, Carol, 2000. "Long-term growth and short-term economic instability," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 359-381, February.
    5. Berument, M. Hakan & Dincer, N. Nergiz & Mustafaoglu, Zafer, 2012. "Effects of growth volatility on economic performance – Empirical evidence from Turkey," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 217(2), pages 351-356.
    6. Bisio, Laura & Ventura, Luigi, 2012. "Growth and volatility reconsidered: reconciling opposite views," MPRA Paper 35937, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Mehmet Balcilar & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2020. "A re-examination of growth and growth uncertainty relationship in a stochastic volatility in the mean model with time-varying parameters," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 47(3), pages 611-641, August.
    8. Christoph Priesmeier & Nikolai Stähler, 2011. "Long Dark Shadows Or Innovative Spirits? The Effects Of (Smoothing) Business Cycles On Economic Growth: A Survey Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 898-912, December.
    9. Alimi, Nabil, 2016. "Volatility and growth in developing countries: An asymmetric effect," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 14(PB), pages 179-188.
    10. Nazrul Islam, 2003. "What have We Learnt from the Convergence Debate?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(3), pages 309-362, July.
    11. Hnatkovska, Viktoria & Loayza, Norman, 2004. "Volatility and growth," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3184, The World Bank.
    12. Balaji Bathmanaban & Raja Sethu Durai S & Ramachandran M, 2017. "The relationship between Output Uncertainty and Economic Growth-Evidence from India," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(4), pages 2680-2691.
    13. Dalila Nicet-Chenaf & Eric Rougier, 2009. "Human capital and structural change: how do they interact with each others in growth," Post-Print hal-00798441, HAL.
    14. Capolupo, Rosa, 2009. "The New Growth Theories and Their Empirics after Twenty Years," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 3, pages 1-72.
    15. Ragchaasuren, Galindev, 2005. "The Relationship between Growth and Volatility under Alternative Shocks," Economics Discussion Papers 9980, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    16. Lopez , J. Humberto & Perry, Guillermo, 2008. "Inequality in Latin America : determinants and consequences," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4504, The World Bank.
    17. K Blackburn & A Pelloni, 2001. "On the Relationship Between Growth and Volatility in Learning-by-Doing Economies," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 01, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    18. Schnell, Fabian, 2013. "Can Monetary Policy Delay the Reallocation of Capital?," Economics Working Paper Series 1329, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    19. Keith Blackburn & Alessandra Pelloni, 2005. "Growth, cycles, and stabilization policy," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 57(2), pages 262-282, April.
    20. Durlauf, Steven N. & Quah, Danny T., 1999. "The new empirics of economic growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 235-308, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E40 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - General

    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:cpr:ceprdp:3561. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.