Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 28, Number 2—Spring 2014—Pages 153–176

Fluctuations in Uncertainty†

Nicholas Bloom

U
ncertainty is an amorphous concept. It reflects uncertainty in the minds of
consumers, managers, and policymakers about possible futures. It is also a
broad concept, including uncertainty over the path of macro phenomena
like GDP growth, micro phenomena like the growth rate of firms, and noneco-
nomic events like war and climate change. In this essay, I address four  questions
about uncertainty.
First, what are some facts and patterns about economic uncertainty? Both
macro and micro uncertainty appear to rise sharply in recessions and fall in booms.
Uncertainty also varies heavily across countries—developing countries appear to
have about one-third more macro uncertainty than developed countries.
Second, why does uncertainty vary during business cycles? The types of exog-
enous shocks that can cause recessions—like wars, oil price jumps, and financial
panics—typically also increase uncertainty. Uncertainty also appears to endoge-
nously increase during recessions, as lower economic growth induces greater micro
and macro uncertainty.
Third, do fluctuations in uncertainty affect behavior? Greater uncertainty appears
to reduce the willingness of firms to hire and invest, and consumers to spend. However,
there is also some evidence that uncertainty can stimulate research and development—
faced with a more uncertain future, some firms appear more willing to innovate.

■ Nicholas Bloom is Professor of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, California,

Co-Director of the Productivity Program, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and Research Fellow, Center for Economic Performance, London School of
Economics, London, United Kingdom, and Research Fellow, Center for Economic and Policy
Research, London, United Kingdom. His email address is [email protected].
†
To access the Appendix and disclosure statement, visit
http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/jep.28.2.153 doi=10.1257/jep.28.2.153
154 Journal of Economic Perspectives

Fourth, has higher uncertainty worsened the Great Recession and slowed the
recovery? A 2008 jump in uncertainty was likely an important factor exacerbating
the size of the economic contraction, accounting for maybe one-third of the drop
in the US GDP.
Much of this discussion is based on research on uncertainty from the last
five  years, reflecting the recent growth of the literature. This surge in research
interest in uncertainty has been driven by several factors. First, the jump in uncer-
tainty in 2008 and its likely role in shaping the Great Recession has focused policy
attention onto the topic. Second, the increased availability of empirical proxies
for uncertainty, such as panels of firm-level outcomes, online news databases, and
surveys, has facilitated empirical work. Third, the increase in computing power has
made it possible to include uncertainty shocks directly in a wide range of models,
allowing economists to abandon assumptions built on “certainty equivalence,”
which refers to the amount of money that would be required as compensation for
risk. While there has been substantial progress, a range of questions remain open
around the measurement, cause, and effect of uncertainty, making this a fertile area
for continued research.

The Facts of Uncertainty

Frank Knight (1921), the famous Chicago economist, created the modern defi-
nition of uncertainty.. Knight started by defining the related concept of risk,, which he
argued describes a known probability distribution over a set of events. In his termi-
nology, flipping a coin is risky—for a fair toss there is a 50 percent chance of heads
and a 50 percent chance of tails. In contrast, Knight defined uncertainty as peoples’
inability to forecast the likelihood of events happening. For example, the number
of coins ever produced by mankind is uncertain. To calculate this would require
estimating the distribution of coins minted across the hundreds of countries that
exist today and throughout history, a task where most people would have no idea
even how to begin.
In this article, I’ll refer to a single concept of uncertainty, but it will typically
be a stand-in for a mixture of risk and uncertainty. Given this broad definition of
uncertainty, it should be unsurprising that there is no perfect measure but instead
a broad range of proxies. The volatility of the stock market or GDP is often used
as a measure of uncertainty because when a data series becomes more volatile it
is harder to forecast. Other common measures of uncertainty include forecaster
disagreement, mentions of “uncertainty” in news, and the dispersion of productivity
shocks to firms. I start by highlighting four key facts about uncertainty based on
these proxies.1

1
All the data used in this paper is available in an online Appendix available with this paper at http://
e-jep.org, and also at my website in this zip file: http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/JEPdata.zip.
 Nicholas Bloom 155

Figure 1
Stock-Market Implied Volatility is Higher in Recessions

60

50

40
VIX index

30

20

10
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

Source: Author using data from the Chicago Board of Options and Exchange.
Notes: Figure  1 shows the VIX index of 30-day implied volatility on the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock
market index. The VIX index is traded on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. It is constructed from
the values of a range of call and put options on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, and represents the
market’s expectation of volatility over the next 30 days. Gray bars are NBER recessions.

Fact 1: Macro Uncertainty Rises in Recessions

The volatility of stock markets, bond markets, exchange rates, and GDP growth
all rise steeply in recessions. In fact, almost every macroeconomic indicator of
uncertainty I know of—from disagreement amongst professional forecasters to the
frequency of the word “uncertain” in the New York Times (Alexopolous and Cohen
2009)—appears to be countercyclical.
As one example, Figure 1 shows the VIX index of 30-day implied volatility on
the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock market index. The VIX index is traded on the
Chicago Board Options Exchange. It is constructed based on the values of a range
of call and put options on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and represents the
market’s expectation of volatility over the next 30  days. The VIX  index is clearly
countercyclical, rising by 58 percent on average in recessions (the shaded areas in
the figure) as dated by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
One explanation for this surge in stock market volatility in recessions is the
effect of leverage. In recessions, firms usually take on more debt, which increases
their stock-returns volatility. However, Schwert (1989) calculates that the leverage
effect can explain at most 10 percent of this rise in uncertainty during recessions.
156 Journal of Economic Perspectives

Another explanation is that increased risk aversion during recessions will tend to
increase the prices of options (because options provide insurance against large price
movements), biasing up this measure of uncertainty. However, these fluctuations
in the VIX are too large to be explained by plausible movements in risk aversion
(Bekaert, Hoerova, and Lo Duca 2013). Moreover, it is not just stock markets that
become more volatile in recessions. Other financial prices like exchange rates and
bond yields also experience surging volatility in recessions.
An alternative proxy of uncertainty is disagreement amongst professional
forecasters. Periods when banks, industry, and professional forecasters hold more
diverse opinions are likely to reflect greater uncertainty. Examining data from the
Philadelphia Federal Reserve panel of about 50  forecasters shows that between
1968 and 2012 the standard deviation across forecasts of US industrial production
growth was 64 percent higher during recessions, similar to results from European
countries (Bachmann, Elstner, and Sims 2010). So forecaster disagreement is
sharply higher in downturns.
A related proxy is how uncertain forecasters are about their own forecasts,
which is called subjective uncertainty. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve has since
1992 asked forecasters to provide probabilities for GDP growth (in percent) falling
“< − 2,” “−
into ten different bins: “< “− 2 to − 1.1,” ““−
− 1 to − 0.1,” and so forth up to
“> 6.” Figure 2 plots the mean of forecasters’ subjective uncertainty calculated using
these probabilities (solid line) alongside the forecast mean (dot-dash line), plus
for comparison the disagreement across forecasters (dash line). We see that both
uncertainty and disagreement rose sharply during the Great Recession.
Yet another proxy for uncertainty is the frequency of newspaper articles
about economic uncertainty. Figure 3 shows the Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2012)
measure of economic policy uncertainty, which counts the frequency of articles
containing the words “uncertain or uncertainty” and “economy or economics”
and one of six  policy words across ten leading US newspapers. Again, this
measure is clearly countercyclical, with its level 51  percent higher on average
during recessions. A  related proxy is the count of the word “uncertain” in the
Federal Reserve’s Beige Book. The Beige Book is a 15,000  word overview of
the  US economy published after each meeting of the Federal Reserves Open
Market Committee. Even here we see evidence for higher uncertainty in reces-
sions: the word “uncertainty” is used 52  percent more often during recessions
(Baker, Bloom, and Davis 2012).
An eclectic mix of other indicators of macro uncertainty also rises in reces-
sions. Scotti (2013) measures the size of the surprise when economic data is
released: that is, she compares the pre-release date expectations (from Bloom-
berg’s median forecast) for categories like nonfarm payroll and quarterly GDP
with their release values. She finds these surprises are 36 percent larger in reces-
sions, suggesting forecasts are less reliable in downturns. Jurado, Ludvigson, and
Ng (2013) use data on hundreds of monthly economic data series in a system of
forecasting equations and look at the implied forecast errors. By their calcula-
tions, forecast errors rise dramatically in large recessions, most notably during
 Figure 2 Fluctuations in Uncertainty 157
GDP Growth Forecaster Uncertainty and Disagreement Both Rose Significantly
during the Great Recession
GDP growth uncertainty and disagreement (same scale)
1.2 6
Mean forecast
(right axis)
1.0
4

GDP growth (mean forecast)

0.8

2
0.6 Forecaster
disagreement
(left axis)
0
0.4

Forecaster uncertainty
0.2 (left axis) −2

0
1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012

Source: Author using data on the forecaster probability distributions of GDP growth rates from the
Philadelphia Survey of Professional Forecasters.
Notes: “Mean forecast” is the average forecaster’s expected GDP growth rate, “Forecaster disagreement”
is the cross-sectional standard deviation of forecasts, and “Forecaster uncertainty” is the median within
forecaster subjective variance. Data are only available on a consistent basis since 1992Q1, with an average
of 48 forecasters per quarter.

Figure 3
Newspaper Policy Uncertainty Index is 51 percent Higher in Recessions

250 Debt
Shutdown & DC2
9/11
Fiscal Cliff
Newspaper policy uncertainty index

Lehman Ceiling;
Gulf and TARP Euro Debt
War I
200 Gulf
Bush War II
Black
Election
Monday Clinton-
Election Russian
Crisis/LTCM Stimulus
150 Debate

100
Euro Crisis
and 2010
Midterms
50

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

Source: Data is from Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2012).

Notes: The figure shows the Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2012) measure of economic policy uncertainty,
which counts the frequency of articles containing the words “uncertain or uncertainty” and “economy
or economics” and one of six policy words in ten leading US newspapers. Data from 1985Q1 to 2013Q4,
normalized to 100 for the period 1985 to 2009. Gray bars are NBER recessions.
 158 Journal of Economic Perspectives

Figure 4
Industry Growth Rate Spreads Increase in Recessions

40
Industry level quarterly output growth rate (%)

99th percentile
20
95th percentile
90th percentile
75th percentile
0 50th percentile
25th percentile
10th percentile
5th percentile
−20
1st percentile

−40

−60

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Notes: The figure shows the 1st, 5th, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th, 95th and 99th percentiles of three-month
percentage growth rates of industrial production for all 196 manufacturing NAICS sectors in the Federal
Reserve Boards’ industry database. Data spans 1972Q1–2013Q3. Gray bars are NBER recessions.

the OPEC  I recession (1973 –1974), the early 1980s rust-belt recession (1982),
and the Great Recession (2007–2009). Nakamura, Sergeyev, and Steinsson (2012)
used over 100  years of consumption data from 16  OECD countries to estimate
short- and long-run fluctuations in volatility, again finding that this volatility rises
strikingly in periods of lower growth.

Fact 2: Micro Uncertainty Rises in Recessions

We can drop down a level of aggregation from looking at macro data to looking
at micro data on individual industries, firms, and plants. At every level, uncertainty
appears to rise during recessions. This result is in some senses “fractal”—that is,
uncertainty rises in recession at each level of disaggregation.
For example, Figure 4 is based on a panel of about 200 manufacturing indus-
tries. The lines are based on the rate of industry output growth, and they show
how different percentiles perform across these industries. During recessions, these
percentiles widen out as some industries do well while others are hit hard. This
increased dispersion is a proxy for industry-level uncertainty because it suggests that
industries are getting larger industry-level shocks during recessions.
Uncertainty as proxied by dispersion at the firm and plant level also surges
in recessions. For example, Campbell, Lettau, Malkiel, and Xu (2001) report that
 Nicholas Bloom 159

Figure 5
Plant Uncertainty—Sales Growth Dispersion

3
Nonrecession
(2005–2006)
Recession
(2008–2009)

2
Density

0
−1.5 −.5 .5 1.5
Sales growth rate

Source: Bloom, Floetotto, Jaimovich, Saporta-Eksten, and Terry (2012).

Notes: Figure 5 plots the dispersion of sales growth rates for a panel of plants within the US manufacturing
for Great Recession of 2008 –2009 (the solid line) against their values for the pre-recession period of
2005 –2006 (the dashed line). Constructed from the Census of Manufactures and the Annual Survey
of Manufactures using a balanced panel of 15,752 establishments active in 2005 –2006 and 2008 –2009.
Moments of the distribution for nonrecession (recession) years are mean 0.026 (− 0.191), variance
0.052 (0.131), coefficient of skewness 0.164 (− 0.330), and kurtosis 13.07 (7.66). The year 2007 is omitted
because according to the NBER the recession began in December 2007, so 2007 is not a clean “before”
or “during” recession year.

cross-firm stock-return variation is almost 50  percent higher in recession than

booms. Likewise, the dispersion of plant-level shocks to total factor productivity rises
sharply in recessions (Kehrig, 2011; Bloom, Floetotto, Jaimovich, Saporta-Eksten,
and Terry 2012). For example, Figure 5 plots the dispersion of sales growth rates
for a balanced panel of about 16,000 plants within the US manufacturing sector for
the Great Recession of 2008–2009 (the solid line) against their values for the
pre-recession period of 2005–2006 (the dashed line). The variance of plants’ sales
growth rates rose by a massive 152 percent during the Great Recession, a striking
jump in sales dispersion.
Digging down even further to individual product prices, yet again we find a
similar story. Vavra (2013) analyzed price changes from the Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics on tens of thousands of products, such as a one-liter bottle of Coca-Cola or a
pack of four Duracell AAA batteries. They find price changes for even these kinds
of items were about 50 percent more volatile during recessions.
160 Journal of Economic Perspectives

Figure 6
Uncertainty Measures Are Countercyclical Across Countries

1.5
Stock index daily returns volatility
Cross-firm daily stock returns spread
Sovereign bond yields daily volatility
1
(normalized to mean 0, SD 1)

Exchange rate daily volatility

GDP forecast disagreement
Uncertainty proxies

.5

−.5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Annual GDP growth deciles

Source: Baker and Bloom (2013).

Notes: Figure 6 is based on annual data for 60 developing and developing countries over the period 1970
to 2012. Each country-year is placed into a bin based on the decile of their annual growth rates, with
bins from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest decile of growth and 10 is the highest decile. So, for example, for
the United States, bin 1 is growth rates of below − 0.3 percent, bin 2 is growth rates of − 0.3 percent to
1.2 percent, bin 3 are growth rates of 1.2 percent to 1.9 percent, and so on, while for the United Kingdom
bin 1 is growth rates of below − 0.8 percent, bin 2 is growth rates of − 0.8 percent to 0.6 percent, and so
on. The uncertainty measures plotted for each bin are averages for each country-year in the bin. Each
decile shows five different measures of uncertainty: stock market volatility, firm stock-returns dispersion,
bond-yield volatility, exchange rate volatility, and macro forecaster disagreement—with each measure
normalized to a mean 0 and standard deviation 1.

This increase in both macro and micro uncertainty during recessions is also true
on the global scale. Figure 6 is based on annual data for 60 developed and developing
countries over the period 1970 to 2012. Each country-year is placed into a bin based
on the deciles of a country’s annual growth rates, with bins from 1 to 10 where 1 is the
lowest decile of growth and 10 is the highest decile. So, for example, for the United
States, bin 1 is for growth rates of below −0.3 percent, bin 2 is for growth rates of
−0.3 percent to 1.2 percent, bin 3 is for growth rates of 1.2 percent to 1.9 percent, and
so on, while for the United Kingdom, bin 1 is for growth rates of below −0.8 percent,
bin 2 is for growth rates of −0.8 percent to 0.6 percent, and so on. The uncertainty
measures plotted for each bin are averages over each country-year in the bin. Each
decile shows five different measures of uncertainty: stock market volatility, firm stock-
returns dispersion, bond-yield volatility, exchange rate volatility, and macro forecaster
disagreement—with each measure normalized to a mean 0 and standard deviation 1.
 Fluctuations in Uncertainty 161

All five of these measures of uncertainty are higher when country growth is
lower, particularly when growth is in its lowest decile, which is typically during a
recession. This highlights the global robustness of the link between recessions
and uncertainty.

Fact 3: Wages and Income Volatility Appear to Be Countercyclical

Unemployment rises during a recession, so the volatility of household incomes
will rise as well. But perhaps less expected is that wages for even those who are
employed also become more volatile during recessions (Meghir and Pistaferri 2004;
Storesletten, Telmer, and Yaron 2004; Heathcote, Perri, and Violante 2010). This is
particularly true for lower-wage workers, whom Guvenen, Ozkan, and Song (forth-
coming) show face a particularly large surge in income volatility during recession.
Thus, the increasing volatility of macro, industry, firm, and plant outcomes in reces-
sions translates into higher volatility of wages for employees.

Fact 4: Uncertainty Is Higher in Developing Countries

Low-income countries in regions like Africa and South America tend to have
the most volatile GDP growth rates, stock markets, and exchange rates. In fact, the
World Bank’s World Development Report 2014,, themed “Risk and Opportunity,”
focused on how households and firms in developing countries face a huge variety
of macro and micro risks (World Bank 2013). In the panel of 60  countries with
available growth and financial data I examined, those with low incomes (less than
$10,000 GDP per capita) had 50 percent higher volatility of growth rates, 12 percent
higher stock-market volatility, and 35  percent higher bond-market volatility, so
overall developing countries experience about one-third higher macro uncertainty.

Why Does Uncertainty Vary?

What factors might be causing these variations in uncertainty? I will first focus
on factors that might cause uncertainty to fluctuate over time. I’ll then turn to some
reasons for the higher uncertainty in low-income and emerging economies. Of
course, identifying possible causes of uncertainty is only one step; the later discus-
sion will consider evidence on the effects of uncertainty.
Bad events often seem to increase uncertainty, events like oil-price shocks,
terrorist attacks, and wars. For example, in Bloom (2009), I defined 17 uncertainty
shocks from 1962 to 2008 on the basis of jumps in stock market volatility and found
that all but one was bad news (in that they lowered expected growth). These uncer-
tainty shocks included the assassination of President Kennedy, the Cuban missile
crisis, the OPEC oil price shocks, the 9/11  attack, and the Gulf Wars. All these
dramatic shocks seemed to shake people’s confidence in their forecasts of economic
growth, raising macro and micro uncertainty. The only uncertainty shock in this
series associated with good news was the October 1982 business cycle turning point,
a relatively minor uncertainty shock.
162 Journal of Economic Perspectives

Why does good news so rarely cause an uncertainty shock? Perhaps good
news often develops more gradually—like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the devel-
opment of the Internet. These change beliefs more smoothly over time instead
of causing large jumps in uncertainty. Indeed, it is hard to come up with any
large good news shocks in recent US history. Or alternatively, perhaps bad news
itself may induce uncertainty. We know from the previous section that recessions
are associated with increased uncertainty. Maybe this is because slower growth
increases uncertainty.
The theory literature highlights four  mechanisms through which recessions
might increase uncertainty. First, when business is good, firms are trading actively,
which helps to generate and spread information (Van Nieuwerburgh and Veldkamp
2006; Fajgelbaum, Schaal, and Tashereau-Dumouchel 2013). But when business is
bad, this activity slows down, reducing the flow of new information and thereby
raising uncertainty. Second, individuals are more confident in predicting the future
when “business as usual” prevails in a growing economy. Forecasting is harder during
recessions (Orlik and Veldkamp 2014). This arises from the fact that recessions are
rare events, so that people are unfamiliar with them. Third, public policy that is
unclear, hyperactive, or both, may raise uncertainty. Pastor and Veronesi (2011)
argue that when the economy is doing well, politicians prefer to stay largely with
their current policies, following the old adage “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” But
when the economy turns down, politicians are tempted to experiment, elevating
economic policy uncertainty. Indeed, Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2012) find that
policy uncertainty rises during recessions, particularly during the Great Recession.
Fourth, when business is slack, it is cheap to try out new ideas and to divert unused
resources to research and development (Bachman and Moscarini 2011; D’Erasmo
and Moscoso-Boedo 2011). This dynamic leads to heightened micro uncertainty,
potentially feeding into higher macro uncertainty.
When considering the reasons for higher uncertainty in lower-income countries,
three mechanisms are typically mentioned (Koren and Tenereyo 2007; World Bank
Development Report 2013). First, developing countries tend to have less-diversified
economies—for example, they may export only a small number of products—so
their entire economy is more exposed to fluctuations in the output and price of
those goods. Second, many of the goods on which developing countries focus also
have quite volatile prices: commodities like rubber, sugar, oil, and copper. Finally,
developing countries appear to have more domestic political shocks like coups,
revolutions, and wars; are more susceptible to natural disasters like epidemics and
floods; and have less-effective fiscal and monetary stabilization policies.

Why Might Fluctuations in Uncertainty Matter: Theory

Having established that uncertainty fluctuates over time, to what extent does
this matter? I will start by discussing the theory concerning the impact of shocks
to uncertainty and then turn to the empirical evidence. The theoretical literature
 Nicholas Bloom 163

emphasizes two  negative channels for uncertainty to influence growth, but also
highlights two positive channels of influence.

Real Options
The largest body of theoretical literature about the effects of uncertainty focuses
on “real options” (Bernanke 1983; Brennan and Schwartz 1985; McDonald and
Siegel 1986). The idea is that firms can look at their investment choices as a series
of options: for example, a supermarket chain that owns an empty plot of land has
the option to build a new store on the plot. If the supermarket becomes uncertain
about the future—for example, because it is unsure if a local housing development
will go ahead—it may prefer to wait. If the housing development proceeds, the
supermarket can develop the site, and if not, it can continue to wait and avoid (for
now) a costly mistake. In the language of real options, the option value of delay for
the supermarket chain is high when uncertainty is high. As a result, uncertainty
makes firms cautious about actions like investment and hiring, which adjustment
costs can make expensive to reverse.
Investment adjustment costs have both a physical element (equipment may
get damaged in installation and removal) and a financial element (the used-good
discount on resale). Ramey and Shapiro (2001) and Cooper and Haltiwanger
(2006) estimate these investment adjustment costs are extremely large at roughly
50  percent of the value of capital.2 Hiring adjustment costs include recruitment,
training, and severance pay, which in Nickell (1986) and Bloom (2009) are esti-
mated at about 10 to 20 percent of annual wages. Schaal (2010) also emphasizes
search frictions, showing how uncertainty can interact with search costs to impede
labor markets in recessions.
However, real options effects are not universal. They arise only when decisions
cannot be easily reversed; after all, reversible actions do not lead to the loss of an
option. Thus, firms may be happy to hire part-time employees even when uncer-
tainty is extremely high, because if conditions deteriorate, they can easily lay off
these employees. In fact, because part-time employees are so flexible, firms may
switch from hiring full-time to part-time employees during periods of high uncer-
tainty, as indeed happens in recessions (Valetta and Bengali 2013).
Real options effects also rely on firms having the ability to wait. But if firms
are racing, perhaps to be the first to patent a new idea or launch a new product,
this option disappears. If delay would be extremely costly, then the option to
delay is not valuable, breaking the negative real options effect of uncertainty
on investment.

2
The literature distinguishes two families of adjustment costs. There are lumpy “nonconvex” adjustment
costs, which are fixed costs (a one-off cost to buy/sell capital) and partial irreversibility (a cost per unit of
capital sold). These “nonconvex” adjustment costs generate real options effects. There are also smooth
“convex” adjustment costs like quadratic adjustment costs (a cost that increases in the squared rate of
investment), which do not generate real options. For details, see Dixit and Pindyck (1994) and Abel and
Eberly (1996).
164 Journal of Economic Perspectives

Finally, real options require that actions that are taken now influence the returns
to actions taken later. But in some situations—like firms producing with a constant-
returns-to-scale technology and selling into a perfectly competitive market—the
choice of investment this period will have no effect on the profitability of investment
next period, leading to no option value from waiting. Thus, another requirement
of the real options literature is that firms are selling into imperfectly competitive
markets and/or operating with a decreasing-returns-to-scale technology.
Turning from investment to consumption, an analogous channel arises for
uncertainty to cause postponed consumption. When consumers are making deci-
sions on buying durables like housing, cars, and furniture, they can usually delay
purchases relatively easily (see, for instance, Eberly 1994). For example, people may
be thinking about moving to another house, but they could either move this year
or wait until next year. This option value of waiting will be much more valuable
when income uncertainty is higher—if, for example, you are unsure about whether
a major promotion will arrive by the end of this year, it makes sense to wait until
this is decided before undertaking an expensive house move. Delaying purchases
of nondurables like food and entertainment is harder, so the real options effects of
uncertainty on nondurable consumption will be lower.
The real option argument not only suggests that uncertainty reduces levels of
investment, hiring, and consumption, but it also makes economic actors less sensitive
to changes in business conditions. This can make countercyclical economic policy
less effective. For example, in low-uncertainty periods, the elasticity of investment
with respect to interest rates might be −1, but when uncertainty is very high, this elas-
ticity could fall to − 0.25. Similarly, higher uncertainty should also make consumers’
durables expenditures less sensitive to demand and prices signals, something Foote,
Hurst, and Leahy (2000) and Bertola, Guiso, and Pistaferri (2005) report in studies
of US and Italian consumers.
In other words, just as the economy is heading into recession, higher uncer-
tainty can make monetary and fiscal stabilization tools less effective. Firms and
consumers are likely to respond more cautiously to interest-rate and tax cuts when
they are particularly uncertain about the future, dampening the impact of any
potential stimulus policy. Because of this shift, stimulus policy may need to be more
aggressive during periods of higher uncertainty. A related argument is that aggres-
sive stimulus policies are helpful for reducing uncertainty by providing reassurance
that the government is taking action to stabilize the economy.
This channel whereby uncertainty reduces firms’ sensitivity also provides an
explanation for procyclical productivity, an empirical regularity found in many
modern studies of business cycles (King and Rebelo 1999). When uncertainty is high,
productive firms are less aggressive in expanding and unproductive firms are less
aggressive in contracting. The high uncertainty makes both of them more cautious.
This caution produces a chilling effect on the productivity-enhancing reallocation
of resources across firms. Because reallocation appears to drive the majority of
aggregate productivity growth (for example, Foster, Haltiwanger, and Krizan 2000,
2006), higher uncertainty can stall productivity growth. This productivity impact
 Fluctuations in Uncertainty 165

of uncertainty shocks underlies the theories of uncertainty-driven business cycles,

which emphasize how uncertainty shocks reduce investment, hiring, and produc-
tivity (Bloom et al. 2012). The difference with more-traditional real business cycle
models (for example, Kydland and Prescott 1982) is that in the uncertainty-driven
theory, the fall in productivity growth is an outcome of the uncertainty shock, rather
than the shock itself.

Risk Aversion and Risk Premia

Investors want to be compensated for higher risk, and because greater
uncertainty leads to increasing risk premia,, this should raise the cost of finance.
Furthermore, uncertainty also increases the probability of default, by expanding the
size of the left-tail default outcomes, raising the default premium and the aggregate
deadweight cost of bankruptcy. This role of uncertainty in raising borrowing costs
can reduce micro and macro growth, as emphasized in papers on the impact of
uncertainty in the presence of financial constraints (Arellano, Bai, and Kehoe 2010;
Christiano, Motto, and Rostagno 2014; Gilchrist, Sim, and Zakrasjek 2011).
Another mechanism related to risk premia is the confidence effect of uncertainty
in models where consumers have pessimistic beliefs (for example, Hansen, Sargent,
and Tallarini 1999; Ilut and Schneider 2011). In these models, agents are so uncer-
tain about the future they cannot form a probability distribution. Instead they have a
range of possible outcomes and act as if the worst outcomes will occur, displaying
a behavior known as “ambiguity aversion.” As the range of possible outcomes
(uncertainty) expands, the worst possible outcome gets worse, so agents cut back on
investment and hiring. Of course this assumes agents are pessimistic, but if instead
agents are optimistic (that is, they assume the best case) as Malmendier and Tate
(2005) hint at for CEOs, then uncertainty can actually have a positive impact.
A rise in uncertainty risk should also lead consumers to increase their precau-
tionary saving,, which reduces consumption expenditure (for example, Bansal and
Yaron 2004). This effect is likely contractionary for an economy in the short run,
but the long-run effects are less clear. After all, at least in theory, lower consump-
tion and greater saving may allow a rise in investment, which could then benefit
long-term growth. However, in most open economies some of this increased saving
will flow abroad, reducing domestic demand. For this reason, Fernández-Villaverde,
Guerrón-Quintana, Rubio-Ramirez, and Uribe (2011) argue that rising uncertainty
can be crippling for growth in smaller highly open countries, as domestic money
flees the country.
What about the effect of a rise in precautionary saving in larger and more
closed countries like the United States? At first, it would seem that uncertainty
may have potentially positive effects—by encouraging consumers to save, this will
increase investment (because savings equals investment in closed economies). But
as several recent papers have noted, if prices are sticky (as New Keynesian models
commonly assume), uncertainty shocks can lead to recessions even in closed
economies because prices do not fall enough to clear markets (for example, Leduc
and Liu 2012; Basu and Bundick 2011; Fernández-Villaverde, Guerrón-Quintana,
166 Journal of Economic Perspectives

Kuester, and Rubio-Ramirez 2011). The intuition is that uncertainty increases the
desire of consumers to save, which should cut interest rates and output prices, stim-
ulating an offsetting rise in investment; but if prices are sticky, this effect does not
happen—prices and interest rates do not fall enough to encourage the offsetting
rise in investment—so that output falls. This effect of uncertainty can be particularly
damaging if interest rates are constrained at zero by the lower bound, as has been
the case during much of the last five years.
Another precautionary effect of uncertainty may affect firms through the incen-
tives of their chief executive officers. Most top corporate executives are not well
diversified: both their personal financial assets and their human capital are dispro-
portionately tied up in their firm. Hence, when uncertainty is high, these executives
may become more cautious in making long-run investments. For example, the chief
executive officer of an oil exploration company may become increasingly nervous
when the price of oil becomes volatile, leading that firm to take a more cautious
position on oil exploration. Panousi and Pananikolaou (2012) have shown in a
panel of US firms that when uncertainty is higher, investment drops, particularly in
firms where the chief executive officers hold extensive equity in the firm and so are
highly exposed to firm-level risk.

Growth Options
There are two  mechanisms through which uncertainty can potentially have
a positive effect on long-run growth. The “growth options” argument is based
on the insight that uncertainty can encourage investment if it increases the size
of the potential prize. For example, Bar-Ilan and Strange (1996) note that if firms
have long delays in completing projects—perhaps because of time-to-build or
time-to-develop—then uncertainty can have a positive effect on investment. As an
illustration, consider a pharmaceutical company developing a new drug that notices
that a mean-preserving increase in demand uncertainty has occurred. The costs
of bad draws (for example, the drug turns out to be ineffective or unsafe) have a
limited lower bound because the firm can cancel the product losing only its sunk
research and development costs. But good draws (the product turns out to be even
more useful and profitable than expected) are not constrained in this way. In this
situation, a rise in mean-preserving risk means higher expected profit when the
product goes to market.3
Growth options were often invoked to explain the dot-com boom of the late
1990s. Firms were unsure about the Internet but that uncertainty encouraged
investment. The worst outcome for firms starting new websites was losing their
development costs, while the best outcome looked ever more profitable as the range

3
This is sometimes called the “good news principle” that only good news matters in growth options
because bad news is capped by closing down the project. This phrase originates from Bernanke (1983),
who discussed the reverse “bad news principle” in terms of the classic real-options negative effects
of uncertainty on investment. In a recent working paper, Segal, Shaliastovich and Yaron (2013) find
interesting evidence for both these good news (growth option) and bad news (real option) effects of
uncertainty in aggregate investment.
 Nicholas Bloom 167

of uncertainty about the Internet expanded. Because developing websites took

time, building one was seen as investing in a “call-option” on the future success of
the Internet. Likewise, a literature on the value of oil drilling leases shows how these
are call options on possible future extraction, so oil price uncertainty increases their
value (Paddock, Siegel, and Smith 1988). More recently Kraft, Schwartz, and Weiss
(2013) have shown how growth options are particularly important for research and
development–intensive firms, so much so that higher uncertainty can raise their
stock value.

Oi–Hartman–Abel Effects
The other channel I  examine through which uncertainty can potentially
increase growth is known as the Oi–Hartman–Abel effect (after Oi 1961; Hartman
1972; Abel 1983). This effect highlights the possibility that if firms can expand
to exploit good outcomes and contract to insure against bad outcomes, they may
be risk loving. For example, if a factory can easily halve production volumes if
the price of its products falls and double production volumes if the price rises,
it should desire a mean-preserving increase in uncertainty, because the firm gets
50  percent during bad outcomes and 200  percent during good outcomes. In
effect, the factory is partly insured against bad outcomes by being able to contract
and has the option to increase its advantage from good outcomes by being able
to expand. (Formally, if profits are convex in demand or costs, then demand or
cost uncertainty increases expected profits.) However, for this mechanism to
work, firms need to be able to easily expand or contract in response to good or
bad news, so while the Oi–Hartman–Abel effects are typically not very strong in
the short run (because of adjustment costs), they can be more powerful in the
medium and long run.

How Much Might Fluctuations in Uncertainty Matter: Empirics

The evidence on the impact of uncertainty is limited because of the difficulties

in stripping out cause and effect. A central challenge in the uncertainty literature
(as in macroeconomics as a whole) is to distinguish the impact of uncertainty
from the impact of recessions. We know that uncertainty moves with the business
cycle, which raises the question of how to distinguish the separate causal effects of
higher uncertainty.
To identify the causal impact of uncertainty on firms and consumers, the
literature has taken three  approaches. One approach relies on timing: that is,
estimating the movements in output, hiring, and investment that follow jumps in
uncertainty. This approach works reasonably well for unexpected shocks to uncer-
tainty but is more problematic if changes in uncertainty are predicted in advance
or are correlated with other unobserved factors. A second approach uses structural
models calibrated from macro and micro moments to quantify the potential effect
of uncertainty shocks. This approach is conceptually well grounded, but like many
168 Journal of Economic Perspectives

structural models, it is sensitive to somewhat debatable modelling assumptions.

A third approach exploits natural experiments like disasters, political coups, trade
changes, or movements in energy and exchange rates. The challenge here is over
the generalizability of these results, and the extent to which these events influence
firms and consumers beyond just changes in uncertainty.
My overall view is that this literature provides suggestive but not conclusive
evidence that uncertainty damages short-run (quarterly and annual) growth, by
reducing output, investment, hiring, consumption, and trade. The longer-run
evidence of the effect of uncertainty on output is far more limited, and while
my personal view is that uncertainty is damaging for growth, it is extremely hard
to show this definitively. One reason is that while uncertainty appears to reduce
short-run hiring and investment, it may also stimulate research and development,
as some recent empirical work suggests. This may be because of the “growth options
effect”—the idea that uncertainty increases the upside from innovative new prod-
ucts. As such, more empirical work on the effects of uncertainty would be valuable,
particularly work which can identify clear causal relationships.

Timing Approaches to Estimating the Effect of Uncertainty Shocks

A standard approach in macroeconomic analysis has been to look at short-term
economic fluctuations separately from long-term trends in economic growth. The
classic macro study of uncertainty by Ramey and Ramey (1995) challenged this
separation. They looked both at a broad sample of 92 countries from 1960 to 1985
and also at a narrower sample of high-income countries from 1950 to 1988. They
considered an equation for forecasting GDP by country, and find that economies
which depart most strongly from that forecast equation—an idea that they equate
with a rise in uncertainty—experience lower growth rates. This negative volatility
link with growth has been confirmed in a number of subsequent studies using more
advanced estimations techniques (Engel and Rangel 2008) or different measures of
uncertainty (Bloom 2009).
Other studies have considered how rising uncertainty might affect other
macroeconomic outcomes. For example, Romer (1990) argues that the uncertainty
created by the stock market crash of 1929 led to a drop in consumer spending on
durable goods. Indeed, she finds a negative correlation between stock market vola-
tility and purchases of consumer durables throughout the prewar period. Handley
and Limão (2012) model the role of uncertainty in how firms make investment
choices related to export markets. When they apply the model to the example of
Portugal joining the European Community in 1986, they find that the removal
of uncertainty accounted for a substantial rise in firm investment spending. Finally,
Novy and Taylor (2014) use US data since the 1960s to examine the differential
impact of uncertainty shocks across sectors to show that uncertainty significantly
depresses trade flows and that this effect may explain about half of the collapse of
global trade in 2008 –2009.
A corresponding micro literature focuses on how uncertainty affects indi-
vidual firms and households, again typically finding that higher uncertainty has
 Fluctuations in Uncertainty 169

a negative impact. For example, Leahy and Whited (1996) examined a panel of
several hundred US publicly listed manufacturing firms and found a strong rela-
tionship between uncertainty, proxied by the stock-price volatility for that firm,
and investment, which they argue is consistent with theories of firms looking at
investment as an irreversible choice. In Bloom, Bond, and Van Reenen (2007), we
confirmed this result in data for 672  UK manufacturing firms from 1972–1991,
using lagged firm accounting and financial data outcomes as instruments. Guiso
and Parigi (1999) used a survey of Italian firms in 1993 in which the firms them-
selves reported the distribution of their expectations of future demand, and using
this measure of uncertainty, they find a large negative relationship between uncer-
tainty and investment.

Structural Models Estimating the Effect of Uncertainty Shocks

One structural approach is to build micro-to-macro general equilibrium
models of firms and the economy, calibrating the key parameters against micro
and macro data moments. For example, in Bloom et al. (2012) we build a general
equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms with labor and capital adjustment
costs and countercyclical micro and macro uncertainty. We find that the average
increase in uncertainty that happens during recessions reduces output by about
3 percent during the first year, but with a rapid recovery in the second year. The
reason for this rapid drop in output is that higher uncertainty leads firms to pause
hiring and investment, cutting aggregate capital and labor through depreciation
and attrition. Productivity growth also drops as reallocation freezes (productive
plants do not expand and unproductive plants do not contract). However, once
uncertainty starts to drop, pent-up demand for hiring and investment leads to
a rapid rebound. Hence, uncertainty shocks generate short, sharp drops and
rebounds in output.
These results, however, appear sensitive to assumptions on some of the
parameter values in the model. For example, Bachmann and Bayer (2012, 2013)
model general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents and capital adjust-
ment, finding much smaller impacts of uncertainty on growth. Their models
differ from ours in that they exclude labor adjustment costs, place more weight
on micro compared to macro uncertainty shocks, and have smaller fluctua-
tions in uncertainty. Which set of assumptions is right is not obvious, and this
highlights the need for richer micro and macro models to pin down these types
of questions.
Another structural approach models individual firms’ behavior, such as
Kellogg’s (forthcoming) study of drilling oil wells in Texas. He finds that jumps
in oil price uncertainty lead firms to pause new drilling activity, with this response
to uncertainty increasing their expected value from drilling new oil wells by up to
25  percent. Hence, for oil firms, it is extremely important to consider both the
level and the uncertainty of future oil prices before drilling wells. Intriguingly,
Kellogg also shows firms appear to use oil futures and derivatives from the New York
Mercantile Exchange to predict future oil prices and volatility (rather than simply
170 Journal of Economic Perspectives

extrapolating from historic prices), suggesting sophisticated forward-looking

behavior on the part of drilling firms.

Using Natural Experiments to Estimate the Effect of Uncertainty

A recent approach to estimating the impact of uncertainty shocks has tried to
exploit various macro and micro natural experiments. For example, in Baker and
Bloom (2013), we sought to use natural disasters, terrorist events, and political shocks
as instruments for uncertainty. We defined these events in terms of a minimum
share of the population killed, a minimum share of GDP lost, or as resulting in a
political regime change and considered data from 60  countries from 1970–2012.
Stock market and news data shows that these events were not anticipated. We use
the events to predict stock market volatility, and then use the stock market volatility
that can be predicted from these shocks to forecast GDP growth. Across countries,
the rise in volatility from these events explains about half of the variation in growth.
In another approach along these lines, Stein and Stone (2012) used the expo-
sure of US firms to exogenous variations in energy and currency volatility as an
instrument for the uncertainty that they face. They find that those firms exposed
to greater uncertainty have lower investment, hiring, and advertising. Indeed, they
estimate that uncertainty accounts for roughly a third of the fall in capital investment
and hiring that occurred in 2008 –2010, a subject taken up in greater detail in the
next section. Interestingly, they also find that uncertainty seems to increase research
and development spending, something that the growth options mechanism—the
idea the more uncertainty yields a larger upside for long-run growth—can explain.

Has Higher Uncertainty Worsened the Great Recession and Slowed

the Recovery?

Finally, I turn to the question of the importance of uncertainty in driving

the recent Great Recession and sluggish recovery. Certainly, policymakers believe
uncertainty has played an important role. For example, the Federal Reserve Open
Market Committee (2008) noted that “participants reported that uncertainty about
the economic outlook was leading firms to defer spending projects until prospects
for economic activity became clearer.” In 2009, Chief Economist of the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund (IMF) Olivier Blanchard wrote in The Economist: “Uncertainty
is largely behind the dramatic collapse in demand. Given the uncertainty, why build
a new plant, or introduce a new product? Better to pause until the smoke clears.”
The Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, noted in her 2009
testimony to the US Congress Joint Economic Committee: “Volatility, according to
some measures, has been over five times as high over the past six months as it was
in the first half of 2007. The resulting uncertainty has almost surely contributed to
a decline in spending.”
Such claims about the damaging impact of uncertainty have continued,
with policymakers arguing it has also been responsible for the slow recovery. For
 Nicholas Bloom 171

example, in 2012 the IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, argued: “There
is a level of uncertainty which is hampering decision makers from investing and
from creating jobs” (IMF 2012). A joint European Union and OECD article in 2013
similarly noted that “high uncertainty is all the more damaging for growth as it
magnifies the effect of credit constraints and weak balance sheets, forcing banks to
rein in credit further and companies to hold back investment” (Buti and Padoan
2013). The International Labor Organization (ILO 2013) argued that “indecision
of policy makers in several countries has led to uncertainty about future conditions
and reinforced corporate tendencies to increase cash holdings or pay dividends
rather than expand capacity and hire new workers.”
But while policymakers clearly think uncertainty has played a central role in
driving the Great Recession and slow recovery, the econometric evidence is really
no more than suggestive. It is certainly true that every measure of economic uncer-
tainty rose sharply in 2008. As one might guess from Figures  1 to 4, the level of
uncertainty around 2008 –2009 was more than triple the size of an average uncer-
tainty shock and about twice as persistent as during an average recession. This jump
in uncertainty reflects its role as both an impulse and a propagation mechanism for
recessions. The shocks initiating the Great Recession—the financial crisis and the
housing collapse—increased uncertainty. In particular, it was unclear how serious
the financial and housing problems were, or what their impact would be nationally
and globally, or what the appropriate policy responses should be. Furthermore, the
Great Recession itself further increased uncertainty, leading the initial slowdown to
be propagated and amplified over time.
For a rough calculation of the magnitude of the impact of uncertainty, I start
with the drop in GDP during the Great Recession. This appears to be about 9 percent,
consisting of the 3  percent drop in GDP over 2008 and 2009 versus the 6  percent
rise that would have occurred if GDP had followed trend growth. Next, we need to
estimate the impact of uncertainty on GDP growth. We can do this several ways, all of
which yield reassuringly similar answers of about a 3 percent drop in GDP (around
one-third of the total decline). One way is to take the 1 percent drop in GDP as esti-
mated from vector autoregressions after an average uncertainty shock (Bloom 2009),
and triple this, remembering that the 2008–2009 rise in uncertainty was about triple
the “normal” uncertainty shock. Another approach is to take the structural model
estimates from Bloom et al. (2012) of a 1.3 percent drop in GDP in the year after
an average recessionary uncertainty shock, and again triple this. Finally, we can use
the estimates from Stein and Stone (2012) who aggregate up from micro-data instru-
mental variable results, again finding that an uncertainty shock the size of the one
experienced during the Great Recession reduced output by about 3 percent.

Concluding Thoughts

A range of evidence shows that uncertainty rises strongly in recessions, at

both the macro and micro levels. More speculatively, I have argued this is because
172 Journal of Economic Perspectives

increases in uncertainty are both part of the impulse arising from bad news shocks
that start recessions, and because uncertainty amplifies recessions by rising further
as growth slows.
The empirical literature on uncertainty is still at an early stage with many open
research questions. First and most immediately, the question over the causality
of uncertainty and growth is still unclear, and more work exploiting both natural
experiments and structural models would be very valuable. Second, our measures
of uncertainty are far from perfect and in fact are best described as proxies rather
than real measures. Developing a wider set of uncertainty measures is important.
For example, there is little data on the time horizon of uncertainty (short-run versus
long-run uncertainty), on types of uncertainty (demand versus supply, technology
versus policy), or on the nature of uncertainty (risk versus Knightian).
The literature on the policy implications of uncertainty is also at an early stage.
The basic lessons seem to be twofold. First, uncertainty shocks appear to lead to
short, sharp drops and recoveries in output, which if a policymaker wanted to stabi-
lize, would require a similarly short, sharp macroeconomic stimulus to achieve
stabilization. Second, policy should try to address the root cause of the uncertainty—
an approach more likely to be effective than treating the symptoms (the drop in
output). For example, during the Great Recession, I believe that one of the most
important policy responses was to stabilize the financial system, helping to stem the
rise in financial uncertainty.
But many policy questions remain. If public policy becomes more rule based,
would this help to reduce policy uncertainty, or, by limiting flexibility, would rules
impede the ability of policymakers to address uncertainty by judicious interventions?
For example, quantitative easing has been used heavily by US monetary authorities
to try and stabilize demand, but is clearly different from the recent history of interest
rate manipulation. If public policy was communicated more transparently, would
this act to reduce uncertainty, or would it introduce greater volatility by generating
more frequent jumps in financial markets after each policy pronouncement? The
Federal Reserve is grappling with these questions as it seeks to be more transparent
in signaling the path of monetary policy.
While the empirical progress on fluctuations in uncertainty over the last decade
has been exciting, there is still much about uncertainty about which we remain
uncertain.

■ I would like to thank David Autor, Steve Davis, Itay Saporta-Eksten, Luke Stein, Timothy
Taylor, Stephen Terry, and Ian Wright for detailed comments on the review. I would like to
thank the National Science Foundation for ongoing funding which supported this research.
 Fluctuations in Uncertainty 173

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