Arbeitspapier

On Measuring Uncertainty: Snakes and Ladders

The Global Crisis demonstrated to the world that Ratings Agencies had misled the public about the stability of financial institutions. The Finance literature had decided that it was impossible to have bubbles in financial markets and any surge in the stock market would be self-correcting. Recent papers have discussed the role of "uncertainty" and its measurement in influencing economic decisions. They attempt to measure uncertainty by indexes of volatility of the stock market, GDP, forecaster disagreement, mentions of uncertainty in news media, and the dispersion of productivity shocks to firms. Underlying their measures of uncertainty is the hypothesis that an increase in uncertainty leads to lower consumption by households and lower investment by firms, and hence leads to lower aggregate investment and growth. This paper argues that although risk can be measured, uncertainty cannot be measured. Even though risk can be measured, a simple symmetric measure (variance or standard deviation) is inappropriate because agents are loss averse and treat gains differently from losses. Although, it is clear that an increase in uncertainty worsens economic conditions, in this paper I shall also argue that this attempt at "measuring" risk or (fundamental) uncertainty is flawed.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 10244

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
General Aggregative Models: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian
Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
Financial Crises
Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
Thema
uncertainty
risk
Keynes
variance measures
loss aversion
investment

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Junankar, Pramod N. (Raja)
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
(wo)
Bonn
(wann)
2016

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:45 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Junankar, Pramod N. (Raja)
  • Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Entstanden

  • 2016

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