Measuring Policy Uncertainty and its Effects

January 18, 2016
By

(This article was originally published at No Hesitations, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)

Fascinating work like Baker, Bloom and Davis (2015) has for some time had me interested in defining and measuring policy uncertainty and its effects. 

A plausible hypothesis is that policy uncertainty, like inflation uncertainty, reduces aggregate welfare by throwing sand in the Walrasian gears. An interesting new paper by Erzo Luttmer and Andrew Samwick, "The Welfare Cost of Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from Social Security," drills down to the micro decision-making level and shows how it reduces individual welfare by directly eroding the intended policy benefits. Nice work.



Please comment on the article here: No Hesitations


Subscribe

Email:

  Subscribe