We develop a new index of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) based on newspaper coverage frequency Several types of evidence – including human readings of 12,000 newspaper articles – indicate that our index proxies for movements in policy-related economic uncertainty Our US index spikes near tight presidential elections, Gulf Wars I and II, the 9/11 attacks, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the 2011 debt-ceiling dispute and other major battles over fiscal policy Using firm-level data, we find that policy uncertainty raises stock price volatility and reduces investment and employment in policy-sensitive sectors like defense, healthcare, and infrastructure construction At the macro level, policy uncertainty innovations foreshadow declines in investment, output, and employment in the United States and, in a panel VAR setting, for 12 major economies Extending our US index back to 1900, EPU rose dramatically in the 1930s (from late 1931) and has drifted upwards since the 1960s

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Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty

Using the policy uncertainty index of Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2013), we document a strong negative relationship between firm-level capital investment and the aggregate level of uncertainty associated with future policy and regulatory outcomes. More importantly, we find evidence that the relation between policy uncertainty and capital investment is not uniform in the cross section, being significantly stronger for firms with a higher degree of investment irreversibility and for firms which are more dependent on government spending. Our results lend empirical support to the notion that policy uncertainty can depress corporate investment by inducing precautionary delays due to investment irreversibility.

Policy Uncertainty and Corporate Investment

Handbook of the Economics of Finance

This review article tries to answer four questions: (i) what are the stylized facts about uncertainty over time; (ii) why does uncertainty vary; (iii) do fluctuations in uncertainty matter; and (iv) did higher uncertainty worsen the Great Recession of 2007-2009? On the first question both macro and micro uncertainty appears to rise sharply in recessions. On the second question the types of exogenous shocks like wars, financial panics and oil price jumps that cause recessions appear to directly increase uncertainty, and uncertainty also appears to endogenously rise further during recessions. On the third question, the evidence suggests uncertainty is damaging for short-run investment and hiring, but there is some evidence it may stimulate longer-run innovation. Finally, in terms of the Great Recession, the large jump in uncertainty in 2008 potentially accounted for about one third of the drop in GDP.

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Fluctuations in Uncertainty

Many observers have argued the regulatory framework in place prior to the global financial crisis was deficient because it was largely “microprudential” in nature (Crockett, 2000; Borio, Furfine, and Lowe, 2001; Borio, 2003; Kashyap and Stein, 2004; Kashyap, Rajan, and Stein, 2008; Brunnermeier et al., 2009; Bank of England, 2009; French et al., 2010). A microprudential approach is one in which regulation is partial-equilibrium in its conception, and aimed at preventing the costly failure of individual financial institutions. By contrast, a “macroprudential” approach recognizes the importance of general-equilibrium effects, and seeks to safeguard the financial system as a whole. In the aftermath of the crisis, there seems to be agreement among both academics and policymakers that financial regulation needs to move in a macroprudential direction. According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (2008): Going forward, a critical question for regulators and supervisors is what their appropriate "field of vision" should be. Under our current system of safety-and-soundness regulation, supervisors often focus on the financial conditions of individual institutions in isolation. An alternative approach, which has been called systemwide or macroprudential oversight, would broaden the mandate of regulators and supervisors to encompass consideration of potential systemic risks and weaknesses as well.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1708173_code753937.pdf?abstractid=1708173&mirid=2

A Macroprudential Approach to Financial Regulation

Micro- and macro-level evidence indicates that fluctuations in idiosyncratic uncertainty have a large effect on investment; the impact of uncertainty on investment occurs primarily through changes in credit spreads; and innovations in credit spreads have a strong effect on investment, irrespective of the level of uncertainty. These findings raise a question regarding the economic significance of the traditional "wait-and-see" effect of uncertainty shocks and point to financial distortions as the main mechanism through which fluctuations in uncertainty affect macroeconomic outcomes. The relative importance of these two mechanisms is analyzed within a quantitative general equilibrium model, featuring heterogeneous firms that face time-varying idiosyncratic uncertainty, irreversibility, nonconvex capital adjustment costs, and financial frictions. The model successfully replicates the stylized facts concerning the macroeconomic implications of uncertainty and financial shocks. By influencing the effective supply of credit, both types of shocks exert a powerful effect on investment and generate countercyclical credit spreads and procyclical leverage, dynamics consistent with the data and counter to those implied by the technology-driven real business cycle models.

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Uncertainty, Financial Frictions, and Investment Dynamics

Using confidential product-level price data underlying the U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI), this paper analyzes the effect of changes in firms’ financial conditions on their price-setting behavior during the ”Great Recession” that surrounds the financial crisis. The evidence indicates that during the height of the crisis in late 2008, firms with “weak” balance sheets increased prices significantly relative to industry averages, whereas firms with “strong” balance sheets lowered prices, a response consistent with an adverse demand shock. These stark differences in price-setting behavior are consistent with the notion that financial frictions may significantly influence the response of aggregate inflation to macroeconomic shocks. We explore the implications of these empirical findings within a general equilibrium framework that allows for customer markets and departures from the frictionless financial markets. In the model, firms have an incentive to set a low price to invest in market share, though when financial distortions are severe, firms forgo these investment opportunities and maintain high prices in an effort to preserve their balance-sheet capacity. Consistent with our empirical findings, the model with financial distortions—relative to the baseline model without such distortions—implies a substantial attenuation of price dynamics in response to contractionary demand shocks.

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Inflation Dynamics During the Financial Crisis

The canonical framework used to price risky debt implies that the payoff structure of levered equity resembles the payoff of a call option, while the bondholders face a payoff structure that is equivalent to that of an investor writing a put option. As a result, an increase in the payoff uncertainty benefits equity holders at the expense of bondholders, a feature of the debt contract with two potentially important implications for real economic activity: First, to the extent that firms face significant frictions in financial markets, an increase in the default-risk premium implies a higher cost of capital and hence a decrease in investment. Second, a reduction in the supply of credit stemming from an increase in uncertainty hampers the efficient reallocation of capital and causes an endogenous decline in the total factor productivity (TFP) that amplifies the economic downturn. This paper analyzes---both empirically and theoretically---how fluctuations in uncertainty interact with financial market imperfections in determining economic outcomes. Using both aggregate time-series and firm-level data, we find strong evidence supporting the notion that financial frictions play a major role in shaping the uncertainty-investment nexus. We then develop a tractable general equilibrium model in which individual firms face time-varying uncertainty and imperfect capital markets when issuing risky bonds and equity to finance investment projects. We calibrate the uncertainty process using micro-level estimates of shocks to the firms' profits and show that the combination of uncertainty shocks and financial frictions can generate fluctuations in economic activity that are observationally equivalent to the TFP-driven business cycles.

This paper explores the hypothesis that the rise in intangible capital is a fundamental driver of the secular trend in US corporate cash holdings over the last decades. Using a new measure, we show that intangible capital is the most important firm-level determinant of corporate cash holdings. Our measure accounts for almost as much of the secular increase in cash since the 1980s as all other determinants together. We then develop a new dynamic dynamic model of corporate cash holdings with two types of productive assets, tangible and intangible capital. Since only tangible capital can be pledged as collateral, a shift toward greater reliance on intangible capital shrinks the debt capacity of firms and leads them to optimally hold more cash in order to preserve financial flexibility. In the model, firms with growth options tend to hold more cash in anticipation of (S,s)-type adjustments in physical capital because they want to avoid raising costly external finance. We show that this mechanism is quantitatively important, as our model generates cash holdings that are up to an order of magnitude higher than the standard benchmark and in line with their empirical averages for the last two decades. Overall, our results suggest that technological change has contributed significantly to recent changes in corporate liquidity management.

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Rising Intangible Capital, Shrinking Debt Capacity, and the US Corporate Savings Glut

This paper uses the staggered changes of R&D tax credits across U.S. states and over time as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the impact of innovation on corporate liquidity. By generating plausibly independent variation in firms' incentive to invest in R&D, we are able to assess the empirical importance of specific theories of the link between innovation and corporate liquidity. Firms increase (decrease) their cash to asset ratios by about one and a half percentage point when their home state increases (cuts) R&D tax credits. These baseline difference-in-differences estimates hold up to a battery of validation, falsification, and robustness checks, which corroborate their internal and external validity. The treatment effect of R&D tax credits increases monotonically with several specific proxies for debt and equity financing frictions. Increases (cuts) in tax credits also lead to increases (decreases) in the ratios of cash to bank lines of credit and to book equity, and to decreases (increases) in bank debt, secured debt, and overall net indebtness, supporting debt and equity financing channels through which innovation impacts the demand for cash. We also find support for a product market competition channel, and assess repatriation and agency explanations. Overall, our analysis offers endogeneity-free evidence that innovation is a first-order driver of corporate liquidity management decisions.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2014/files/201472pap.pdf

Jae W. Sim

Papers

Uncertainty, Financial Frictions, and Investment Dynamics

Inflation Dynamics During the Financial Crisis

Uncertainty, Financial Frictions, and Investment Dynamics

Rising Intangible Capital, Shrinking Debt Capacity, and the US Corporate Savings Glut

Why Do Innovative Firms Hold So Much Cash? Evidence from Changes in State R&D Tax Credits