Frequency-dependent real-time effects of uncertainty in the United States : evidence from daily data

Abstract

In this paper, we analyse the impact of uncertainty shocks at the daily-frequency on key macroeconomic variables for the United States. In doing so, we use a vector autoregressive (VAR) model, including the inflation rate, a real-time measure of economic activity and a measure of monetary policy as endogenous variables and decompose uncertainty effects into short, medium and long-term based on a discrete-time Fourier transformation. Aggregate results (prior to decomposition) show that an increase in economic uncertainty has a significant expansionary impact on monetary policy. However, when we decompose uncertainty into its short-, medium- and long-run components, we find that economic activity is affected negatively in a statistically significant manner to shocks in low-frequency uncertainty, while, statistically significant monetary expansion is observed under shocks to relatively high frequencies of uncertainty.