TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bloom,Nicholas
TI  - The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13385
PY  - 2007
Y2  - September 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13385
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13385.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Nicholas Bloom
Stanford University
Department of Economics
579 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6072
Tel: 650/725-3266
Fax: 650/725-5702
E-Mail: nbloom@stanford.edu
AB  - Uncertainty appears to jump up after major shocks like the Cuban Missile crisis, the assassination of JFK, the OPEC I oil-price shock and the 9/11 terrorist attack. This paper offers a structural framework to analyze the impact of these uncertainty shocks. I build a model with a time varying second moment, which is numerically solved and estimated using firm level data. The parameterized model is then used to simulate a macro uncertainty shock, which produces a rapid drop and rebound in aggregate output and employment. This occurs because higher uncertainty causes firms to temporarily pause their investment and hiring. Productivity growth also falls because this pause in activity freezes reallocation across units. In the medium term the increased volatility from the shock induces an overshoot in output, employment and productivity. Thus, second moment shocks generate short sharp recessions and recoveries. This simulated impact of an uncertainty shock is compared to VAR estimations on actual data, showing a good match in both magnitude and timing. The paper also jointly estimates labor and capital convex and non-convex adjustment costs. Ignoring capital adjustment costs is shown to lead to substantial bias while ignoring labor adjustment costs does not.
ER  -