Marko Melolinna and Srdan Tatomir

Uncertainty is in the spotlight again. And the MPC believe it is an important factor influencing the slowdown in domestic demand (August 2017 Inflation Report). Previous work by Haddow et al. (2013) has found a composite aggregate indicator of uncertainty combining several different variables that does appear to have explanatory power for GDP growth; but as Kristin Forbes notes these measures correlate better with consumption than investment. So in this blog post, we look at firm-level data to explore measures of uncertainty that matter for how firms invest in the United Kingdom. Our aggregate measure of uncertainty has a better forecast performance for investment than the composite aggregate indicator does.

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