Idiosyncratic Uncertainty Research Articles

Asset Returns and Economic Uncertainty: A Cross-Country Analysis

This paper examines the effects of economic uncertainty (idiosyncratic vis-à-vis common uncertainty) on equity, bond and housing returns across both developed and developing countries. Building on International/Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM), we find that economic uncertainty exerts negative effects on equity, bond and housing returns. When we decompose economic uncertainty into two parts: idiosyncratic and common economic uncertainty, we find that ‘idiosyncratic uncertainty’ affects equity, bond and housing returns more negative and pronounced than ‘common’ uncertainty, where investors do not demonstrate differences in responses to the different dimensions of uncertainty. Moreover, there are weak lagged effects of economic uncertainty on asset returns. Additionally, we find negative uncertainty premium for equity more persistently in bullish rather than bearish market conditions. Our results are also robust for low frequency data and inclusion of covid period in the analysis. Our findings have implications for policy makers in both developed and emerging markets regarding clear communication of economic policies.

Adaptive preferences: An evolutionary model of non-expected utility and ambiguity aversion

We enrich an evolutionary model with common and idiosyncratic uncertainty as in Robson (1996) by allowing for hidden actions (or phenotypic flexibility). In contexts where common uncertainty is ambiguous and idiosyncratic uncertainty is risky, the model generates both ambiguity aversion and non-expected-utility preferences for risk, thereby providing a link between the two types of behavior. While the general evolutionarily optimal objective function does not have an obvious similarity to functional forms studied in the literature, our main results show that it can be recast as a combination of familiar models of ambiguity aversion and non-expected utility. We show that particular classes of hidden actions generate the special cases of rank-dependent or divergence risk preferences embedded within a model of ambiguity aversion.

International evidence on global economic uncertainty and cross‐sectional stock returns

AbstractWe investigate the predictive role of global economic uncertainty exposure at the firm level in the top‐five developed stock markets outside the US. Applying portfolio‐level sorting strategies, we find that exposure to global idiosyncratic uncertainty exhibits stronger predictive power than either total or common uncertainty. Further, the idiosyncratic uncertainty betas are negatively related to future stock returns over multiple trading horizons in the UK, Europe, and Canada, and this relationship cannot be explained by common risk factors, including market, size, value, investment, profitability, and momentum. Our findings are robust to the use of firm‐level Fama–MacBeth regressions and additional trading horizons.

Construction, Real Uncertainty, and Stock-Level Investment Anomalies

Abstract We show that the negative relation between real investments and future stock returns is primarily driven by the subsample of firms building additional capacity. We develop a real options model to rationalize that evidence based on the premise that firms need to learn how to best operate modern capacity vintages, inducing idiosyncratic uncertainty in that capacity’s production costs over the learning period. Conversely, the uncertainty lowers the expected return of firms with newly built capacity until it is resolved. Further evidence based on profit sensitivities to aggregate conditions; analyst forecast-error volatilities; and high- versus low-tech industry subsamples supports our uncertainty explanation.

Risk network of global energy markets

This study evaluates extreme uncertainty connectedness among top global energy firms. The sample comprises of 68 firms from four energy-related subsectors (oil & gas, oil & gas related equipment and services, multiline utilities, and renewable energy). To provide an overview of tail connectedness, we construct a high-dimensional network between firms by utilizing a generalized error decomposition and a sparse vector autoregression framework with a latent common factor. Our empirical results indicate that between the four subsectors, the renewable energy subsector exhibits the highest uncertainty transmission to other underlying subsectors, primarily credited to an increased within-subsector idiosyncratic uncertainty before the COVID-19 crisis. After the burst of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the higher connectedness, the role of the renewable energy companies in the spillover network is further intensified. The uncertainty connectedness demonstrates a time-varying trait. While the oil and gas subsector exhibits greater long-term linkages with the oil and gas related equipment and services subsector, the long-run dynamics exhibit a lower interconnectedness as compared to the short-run. Finally, there is an increased connectedness among companies operating in the same subsector with similar size, attributing to similarity and competition.

Leasing as a Mitigation of Financial Accelerator Effects

Abstract We document that leased capital accounts for about 20% of total physical productive assets used by US public firms, and its proportion is more than 40% among small and financially constrained firms. The leased capital ratio exhibits a strong countercyclical pattern over business cycles and a positive correlation with cross-sectional idiosyncratic uncertainty. We argue that existing macro models with financial frictions assume that firms cannot rent capital and overlook the effects of leasing activities on business cycle dynamics. We explicitly introduce a buy-versus-lease decision into the Bernanke–Gertler–Gilchrist financial accelerator model setting to demonstrate a novel and quantitatively important economic mechanism: that the increased use of leased capital when financial constraints become tighter in bad states significantly mitigates the financial accelerator mechanism and thus also mitigates the response of macroeconomic variables to negative total factor productivity shocks and risk shocks. We provide strong empirical evidence to support our mechanism.

Rational inattention, misallocation, and the aggregate economy

I study the effect of firm managers’ information-processing constraints on production decisions, resource misallocation, and the aggregate economy. Managers have a finite information-processing capacity to reduce uncertainty about firm-specific and economy-wide shocks. The model implies that an increase in aggregate uncertainty leads to reallocation of capacity from learning about firm-specific shocks to learning about aggregate state, leading to higher misallocation of resources and lower output. In contrast, an increase in idiosyncratic uncertainty (through an opposite mechanism) has a non-monotonic effect on aggregate productivity. The model produces new implications regarding the co-movement of inputs and Labor-TFP sensitivity which I confirm empirically.

Cross-country uncertainty spillovers: Evidence from international survey data

Using a large international survey of professional forecasters, we construct measures of economic uncertainty surrounding output growth, inflation, the interest rate, exchange rate and current account. We then analyze uncertainty spillovers across major advanced and emerging economies using large multi-country Bayesian Panel VARs. We consider how our results change if our uncertainty measures reflect: disagreement among forecasters (idiosyncratic uncertainty); the variance of their mean forecast errors (common uncertainty); or both types of uncertainty. We show that the US is an important but not dominant source of uncertainty, affecting other economies through interest rate and exchange rate uncertainty. This reflects the major role played by US monetary policy and the dollar in the global financial system. Crucially, though, the Eurozone followed by the UK and China are also important sources of uncertainty. We also find that, on average, foreign interest rate and exchange rate uncertainty are more important than foreign output growth uncertainty. While spillovers in idiosyncratic uncertainty are more frequently observed, failing to account for common uncertainty can lead us to overestimate the role played by smaller economies.

The determination of public debt under both aggregate and idiosyncratic uncertainty

We use an analytically tractable, heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets model to show that the Ramsey planner's decision to finance stochastic public expenditures implies a departure from tax smoothing and an endogenous mean-reverting force to support positive debt growth despite the government's precautionary saving motives. Specifically, the government's attempt to balance the competing incentives between its own precautionary saving (tax smoothing) and households' precautionary saving (individual consumption smoothing)—even at the cost of extra tax distortion—implies an endogenous, soft lower bound on the stochastic unit-root dynamics of optimal taxes and public debt.

Impact of macroeconomic and idiosyncratic uncertainty on firms' financing decisions: Evidence from SADC countries

Purpose of Study: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of idiosyncratic and macroeconomic risks on financing decision on SADC countries. Methodology: Employing data from the African Financials database, the analysis is conducted over a ten-year period spanning from 2008 - 2019 for 309 companies. Unit Root Fisher Chi- Square Test and Granger Causality test were employed to test for unidirectional and bidirectional relationships cross-sectionally. Pooled Regression Analysis- (Fixed and Random effect) was employed as main topology for panel regression analysis. Findings: The study confirmed that companies become risk averse when there is an increase in idiosyncratic and macroeconomic risk and therefore take less leverage whichever type of financing decision is opted. In other words, when there are high idiosyncratic risks, debt to equity ratio is low. Banking and financial institutions charge a higher risk premium for companies having a high-risk profile. Due to this, the cost of debt financing augments. Therefore, companies employ internal financing and reduce debts due to high bankruptcy risk and costs. This finding is in line with the pecking order theory (Myers and Majluf, 1984). Conversely, a significant positive linkage is reported in Namibia and South Africa. This estimate posits that these companies use more debts during periods of high idiosyncratic risk which corresponds to the trade- off theory. Originality: The study is among one of the pioneering works underpinning the idiosyncratic risk and macroeconomic risk on capital structure and relying on a large number of companies across the SADC region. In this respect, it adds contribution to the existing literature on risks and capital structure to the socio-economic goals of the SADC region.

CLASSIC POLICY BENCHMARKS AND INEQUALITY

AbstractThis note provides a nontechnical summary of a research paper (Bullard and DiCecio [2021, Classical policy benchmarks for economies with substantial inequality, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, unpublished manuscript]) that I presented as the NIESR 2021 Dow Lecture on 9 February 2021. In the paper, we construct a simple benchmark macroeconomic model with substantial heterogeneity among households, enough to generate empirically plausible Gini coefficients for the distributions of consumption, income and financial wealth. The model includes aggregate shocks as well as both permanent and temporary idiosyncratic uncertainties. Four policymakers—implementing monetary, fiscal, labour market and education policies—act in concert to achieve a first-best allocation of resources. We argue that the roles of these policymaker types are ‘classic’ and match up well with observed policymaker roles in OECD countries. We regard this simple economy as a benchmark for the study of other aspects of the interaction between policy and inequality.

What uncertainty does to euro area sovereign bond markets: Flight to safety and flight to quality

We use a panel of 10 euro area countries over the period 1996Q1-2017Q4 to show that heightened uncertainty leads to (i) a flight to “safety” and (ii) a flight to “quality” in sovereign bond markets. Global, macroeconomic and the common euro area uncertainty outperform country-level, financial and euro area idiosyncratic uncertainty in forecasting sovereign bond risk premia, respectively. A rise in economic policy uncertainty also pushes investors to demand a disproportionately larger premium to hold “risky” bonds versus the “safe-haven” bond. Finally, business and economic related uncertainty is of first-order importance, while politics and government uncertainty plays a somewhat secondary role. Our results are robust to yield curve inversions, risk rating metrics, (non-standard) monetary policy conditions and the occurrence of sovereign debt crises.

Uncertainty, firm entry, and investment dynamics

AbstractPrevious macro‐ and micro‐level evidence indicate that fluctuations in idiosyncratic uncertainty have an important effect on investment, both directly and indirectly through financial market frictions. The objective of this paper was to explore, beyond the two traditional and complementary channels, a new one: firm entry. By utilizing a novel and large dataset on Greek firms covering the entire economy over the period 2000–2014 and employing a panel‐VAR methodology, we examine and evaluate the impact of shocks to the number of startups, idiosyncratic uncertainty, and financial conditions on the investment growth at the industry level. Our findings can be summarized as follows. First, a shock to the number of new firms has significant effects on investment that persist for many years. Second, although all the three variables are important drivers of investment growth dynamics, uncertainty has the largest impact (explaining about the 15% of the variability of investment growth), firm creation follows (it explains about the 7%), while financial conditions have the smallest direct effect (explaining the 3.5%). Finally, we demonstrate that firm entry constitutes an important propagation mechanism for the transmission of uncertainty shocks in the investment growth trajectories.

Flight to housing in China

We empirically detect the flight to safety vis-a-vis housing in China: Great economic uncertainty causes the prices of housing assets to soar. To stabilize housing prices, China has imposed purchase restrictions on the housing market. We study the aggregate and distributional effects of this housing policy by developing a two-sector model with heterogeneous households. An uncertainty shock generates a countercyclical housing boom by shifting outward households’ demand for housing as a store of value. A vibrant housing sector then leads to an economic recession by crowding out resources that could have been allocated to the real sector. Our quantitative analysis suggests that the policy limiting housing purchases effectively curb surging housing prices. However, the policy restricts households’ access to housing that can be used to buffer idiosyncratic uncertainties, creating a larger consumption dispersion. Consequently, the housing policy creates a trade-off between macro-level stability and micro-level consumption risk sharing.

Impact of idiosyncratic and macroeconomic risks on capital structure: evidence from SADC countries

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of idiosyncratic and macroeconomic risks on capital structure on SADC countries.Design/methodology/approachEmploying data from the African Financials database, the analysis is conducted over a ten year period spanning from 2009 to 2018 for 309 companies. Unit Root Fisher Chi-Square test and Granger Causality test were employed to test for unidirectional and bidirectional relationships cross-sectionally. To resolve endogeneity issues, System GMM was used as main topology for panel regression analysis.FindingsThe study confirmed that companies become risk averse when there is an increase in idiosyncratic and macroeconomic risk and therefore take less leverage. According to the perking order theory, a higher variability in earnings shows that the bankruptcy probability amplifies. Hence, institutions with high income employ more internal finance during periods of high idiosyncratic and macroeconomic uncertainty thereby lowering leverage. A positive significant and statistically relationship is also confirmed between idiosyncratic risk and leverage in Botswana, South Africa and Tanzania. Companies with higher leverage make riskier investment in line with the trade-off theory. In short, executives from the SADC region consider more importance to fluctuations in risk while accelerating or diminishing leverage in their capital structure.Originality/valueThe study is among one of the pioneering work underpinning the idiosyncratic risk and macroeconomic risk on capital structure and relying on a large number of companies across the SADC region. In this respect, it adds contribution to the existing literature on risks and capital structure to the socio-economic goals of the SADC region.

Under-diversification and idiosyncratic risk externalities

We study the effects of idiosyncratic uncertainty on asset prices, investment, and welfare. We consider an economy with two main components: under-diversification and endogenous, countercyclical idiosyncratic risk. The equilibrium is subject to underinvestment and excessive aggregate risk-taking. Inefficiencies stem from an idiosyncratic risk externality, as firms do not internalize the effect of their investment decisions on the risk borne by others. Risk externalities depend on an idiosyncratic risk premium and a variance risk premium. We assess their magnitude empirically. The optimal allocation can be implemented through financial regulation using a tax benefit on debt and risk-weighted capital requirements.

Time‐varying impact of global, region‐, and country‐specific uncertainties on the volatility of international trade

AbstractWe use a dynamic factor model with time‐varying parameters and stochastic volatility to decompose the variance of exports and imports over time for 22 Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries spanning the quarterly period of 1960:01–2016:04 into contributions from country‐ and region‐specific uncertainties and uncertainty common to all countries. We find that, while idiosyncratic uncertainty has a dominant role in explaining the volatility of international trade, global, country‐, and region‐specific uncertainties drive around 40% of the volatility of real exports and imports, with the impact of the latter three uncertainties rising in explanatory power during episodes of crises. Our results have important policy implications.

Concurrent Earnings Announcements and the Allocation of Investor Attention

We study how investors allocate attention between firm-specific and aggregate information in earnings announcements. We hypothesize that as the number of firms announcing earnings on a given day increases, so too does the net benefit of processing aggregate rather than idiosyncratic information in earnings announcements. Consistent with this prediction, we show that aggregate uncertainty declines on days with more earnings announcements, while simultaneously the idiosyncratic uncertainty of announcing firms increases. We further show that investor behavior reflects such an attention allocation: on days with many firms announcing earnings, investors adjust their portfolio by trading securities with higher exposure to aggregate uncertainty, and they perform more Internet searches for macro-related terms. Overall, the evidence is consistent with predictions from recent information choice models and indicates that investors rationally allocate their limited attention between different types of information.

Missing Aggregate Dynamics: On the Slow Convergence of Lumpy Adjustment Models

The dynamic response of aggregate variables to shocks is one of the central concerns of applied macroeconomics. The main measurement procedure for these dynamics consists of estimmiating an ARMA or VAR (VARs, for short). In non- or semi-structural approaches, the characterization of dynamics stops there. In other, more structural approaches, researcher try to uncover underlying adjustment cost parameters from the estimated VARs. Yet, in others, such as in RBC models, these estimates are used as the benchmark over which the success of the calibration exercise, and the need for further theorizing, is assessed. The main point of this paper is that when the microeconomic adjustment underlying the corresponding aggregates is lumpy, conventional VARs procedures are often inadequate for all of the above practices. In particular, the researcher will conclude that there is less persistence in the response of aggregate variables to aggregate shocks than there really is. Paradoxically, while idiosyncratic productivity and demand shocks smooth away microeconomic non-convexities and are often used as a justification for approximating aggregate dynamics with linear models, their presence exacerbate the bias. Since in practice idiosyncratic uncertainty is many times larger than aggregate uncertainty, we conclude that the problem of missing aggregate dynamics is prevalent in empirical and quantitative macroeconomic research.

Breaking the Word Bank: Measurement and Effects of Bank Level Uncertainty

Banks differ from non-financial firms as banks must communicate to both regulators and shareholders. Also, unlike non-financial firms, banks possess opaque and complex balance sheets and are the main providers of credit to the real economy. In this paper, I propose a new index to detect the idiosyncratic uncertainty banks face at the bank-quarter level by applying natural language processing techniques to earnings conference call transcripts. The index reveals which banks at a given quarter signal more uncertainty about their balance sheets. Higher uncertainty is associated with lower lending and higher liquidity the next quarter, suggesting active management of uncertainty. The active management of uncertainty is more pronounced during periods of high aggregate volatility and for banks with more skin in the game. Using loan level data and firm fixed effects, I control for demand-side factors and find that higher bank level uncertainty is associated with lower loan issuances the following quarter.