IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/25720.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Policy News and Stock Market Volatility

Author

Listed:
  • Scott R. Baker
  • Nicholas Bloom
  • Steven J. Davis
  • Kyle J. Kost

Abstract

We create a newspaper-based Equity Market Volatility (EMV) tracker that moves with the VIX and with the realized volatility of returns on the S&P 500. Parsing the underlying text, we find that 72 percent of EMV articles discuss the Macroeconomic Outlook, and 44 percent discuss Commodity Markets. Policy news is another major source of volatility: 35 percent of EMV articles refer to Fiscal Policy (mostly Tax Policy), 30 percent discuss Monetary Policy, 25 percent refer to one or more forms of Regulation, and 13 percent mention National Security matters. The contribution of particular policy areas fluctuates greatly over time. Trade Policy news, for example, went from a virtual nonfactor in equity market volatility to a leading source after Donald Trump’s election and especially after the intensification of U.S-China trade tensions. The share of EMV articles with attention to government policy rises over time, reaching its peak in 2017-18. We validate our measurement approach in various ways. For example, tailoring our EMV tracker to news about petroleum markets yields a measure that rises and falls with the implied and realized volatility of oil prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis & Kyle J. Kost, 2019. "Policy News and Stock Market Volatility," NBER Working Papers 25720, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25720
    Note: AP EFG ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w25720.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Shiller, 1984. "Stock Prices and Social Dynamics," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 15(2), pages 457-510.
    2. Pástor, Ľuboš & Veronesi, Pietro, 2013. "Political uncertainty and risk premia," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 520-545.
    3. 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.
    4. Fama, Eugene F, 1981. "Stock Returns, Real Activity, Inflation, and Money," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(4), pages 545-565, September.
    5. John Y. Campbell, Robert J. Shiller, 1988. "The Dividend-Price Ratio and Expectations of Future Dividends and Discount Factors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(3), pages 195-228.
    6. Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 421-436, June.
    7. Tarek A Hassan & Stephan Hollander & Laurence van Lent & Ahmed Tahoun, 2019. "Firm-Level Political Risk: Measurement and Effects," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(4), pages 2135-2202.
    8. Torben G. Andersen & Tim Bollerslev & Francis X. Diebold & Clara Vega, 2003. "Micro Effects of Macro Announcements: Real-Time Price Discovery in Foreign Exchange," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 38-62, March.
    9. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Brandice Canes-Wrone & Steven J. Davis & Jonathan Rodden, 2014. "Why Has US Policy Uncertainty Risen since 1960?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 56-60, May.
    10. Robert J. Barro, 2006. "Rare Disasters and Asset Markets in the Twentieth Century," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 823-866.
    11. Summers, Lawrence H, 1986. "Does the Stock Market Rationally Reflect Fundamental Values?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(3), pages 591-601, July.
    12. Niederhoffer, Victor, 1971. "The Analysis of World Events and Stock Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(2), pages 193-219, April.
    13. Lutz Kilian & Cheolbeom Park, 2009. "The Impact Of Oil Price Shocks On The U.S. Stock Market," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1267-1287, November.
    14. Forbes, Kristin J. & Warnock, Francis E., 2012. "Capital flow waves: Surges, stops, flight, and retrenchment," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 235-251.
    15. John H. Boyd & Jian Hu & Ravi Jagannathan, 2005. "The Stock Market's Reaction to Unemployment News: Why Bad News Is Usually Good for Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(2), pages 649-672, April.
    16. Xavier Gabaix, 2012. "Variable Rare Disasters: An Exactly Solved Framework for Ten Puzzles in Macro-Finance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(2), pages 645-700.
    17. Andersen, Torben G. & Bollerslev, Tim & Diebold, Francis X. & Vega, Clara, 2007. "Real-time price discovery in global stock, bond and foreign exchange markets," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 251-277, November.
    18. Campbell, John Y & Shiller, Robert J, 1987. "Cointegration and Tests of Present Value Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(5), pages 1062-1088, October.
    19. Rietz, Thomas A., 1988. "The equity risk premium a solution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 117-131, July.
    20. Itamar Drechsler & Amir Yaron, 2011. "What's Vol Got to Do with It," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(1), pages 1-45.
    21. Manela, Asaf & Moreira, Alan, 2017. "News implied volatility and disaster concerns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 137-162.
    22. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Michael Weber, 2016. "Are Sticky Prices Costly? Evidence from the Stock Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(1), pages 165-199, January.
    23. Gourio, François, 2008. "Time-series predictability in the disaster model," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 191-203, December.
    24. Cochrane, John H, 1992. "Explaining the Variance of Price-Dividend Ratios," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(2), pages 243-280.
    25. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang & Tano Santos, 2001. "Prospect Theory and Asset Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 1-53.
    26. Christensen, B. J. & Prabhala, N. R., 1998. "The relation between implied and realized volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 125-150, November.
    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. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis & Marco C. Sammon, 2021. "What Triggers Stock Market Jumps?," NBER Working Papers 28687, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. John H. Cochrane, 2011. "Discount Rates," NBER Working Papers 16972, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Andrew Y. Chen, 2014. "Precautionary Volatility and Asset Prices," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-59, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Barberis, Nicholas & Greenwood, Robin & Jin, Lawrence & Shleifer, Andrei, 2015. "X-CAPM: An extrapolative capital asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 1-24.
    5. Tim Bollerslev & Robert J. Hodrick, 1992. "Financial Market Efficiency Tests," NBER Working Papers 4108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Roberto Marfè & Julien Penasse, 2016. "The Time-Varying Risk of Macroeconomic Disasters," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 463, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    7. Kroencke, Tim A., 2022. "Recessions and the stock market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 61-77.
    8. Jerry Tsai & Jessica A. Wachter, 2015. "Disaster Risk and its Implications for Asset Pricing," NBER Working Papers 20926, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2013. "Understanding Asset Prices," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    10. Manela, Asaf & Moreira, Alan, 2017. "News implied volatility and disaster concerns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 137-162.
    11. Alfonso Irarrazabal & Juan Carlos Parra-Alvarez, 2015. "Time-varying disaster risk models: An empirical assessment of the Rietz-Barro hypothesis," CREATES Research Papers 2015-08, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    12. Froot, Kenneth A & Obstfeld, Maurice, 1991. "Intrinsic Bubbles: The Case of Stock Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1189-1214, December.
    13. Rangan Gupta & Tahir Suleman & Mark E. Wohar, 2019. "The role of time‐varying rare disaster risks in predicting bond returns and volatility," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 327-340, July.
    14. Bryan Kelly & Hao Jiang, 2013. "Tail Risk and Asset Prices," NBER Working Papers 19375, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Wachter, Jessica A. & Warusawitharana, Missaka, 2009. "Predictable returns and asset allocation: Should a skeptical investor time the market?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 162-178, February.
    16. Tyler Muir, 2017. "Financial Crises and Risk Premia," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(2), pages 765-809.
    17. Jessica A. Wachter, 2013. "Can Time-Varying Risk of Rare Disasters Explain Aggregate Stock Market Volatility?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(3), pages 987-1035, June.
    18. George M. Constantinides & Anisha Ghosh, 2017. "Asset Pricing with Countercyclical Household Consumption Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(1), pages 415-460, February.
    19. John Y. Campbell & Robert J. Shiller, 1988. "Stock Prices, Earnings and Expected Dividends," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 858, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    20. Demirer, Riza & Gupta, Rangan & Suleman, Tahir & Wohar, Mark E., 2018. "Time-varying rare disaster risks, oil returns and volatility," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 239-248.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    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:nbr:nberwo:25720. 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://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.