Really Uncertain Business Cycles

Abstract

We propose uncertainty shocks as a new shock that drives business cycles.First, we demonstrate that microeconomic uncertainty is robustly countercyclical, rising sharply during recessions, particularly during the Great Recession of 2007-2009.Second, we quantify the impact of time-varying uncertainty on the economy in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms.We find that reasonably calibrated uncertainty shocks can explain drops and rebounds in GDP of around 3%.Moreover, we show that increased uncertainty alters the relative impact of government policies, making them initially less effective and then subsequently more effective.