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Publications

Measuring macroeconomic uncertainty: A cross-country analysisJournal articleAndreas Dibiasi et Samad Sarferaz, European Economic Review, Volume 153, pp. 104383, 2023

This paper constructs internationally consistent measures of macroeconomic uncertainty. Our econometric framework extracts uncertainty from revisions in data obtained from standardized national accounts. Applying our model to post-WWII real-time data, we estimate macroeconomic uncertainty for 39 countries. The cross-country dimension of our uncertainty data allows us to study the impact of uncertainty shocks under varying degrees of employment protection legislation. Our empirical findings suggest that the effects of uncertainty shocks are stronger and more persistent in countries with low employment protection compared to countries with high employment protection. These empirical findings are in line with a theoretical model under varying firing cost.

Measuring Knightian uncertaintyJournal articleAndreas Dibiasi et David Iselin, Empirical Economics, Volume 61, Issue 4, pp. 2113-2141, 2021

Knightian uncertainty represents a situation in which it is no longer possible to form expectations about future events. We propose a method to directly measure Knightian uncertainty. Our approach relies on firm-level data and measures the share of firms that do not formalize expectations about their future demand. We construct the Knightian Uncertainty Indicator for Switzerland and show that the indicator is able to identify times of high uncertainty. We evaluate the indicator by comparing it to established uncertainty measures. We find that a one standard deviation innovation of the Knightian Uncertainty Indicator leads to a negative and persistent reduction of investment.

The effects of policy uncertainty on investment: Evidence from the unexpected acceptance of a far-reaching referendum in SwitzerlandJournal articleAndreas Dibiasi, Klaus Abberger, Michael Siegenthaler et Jan-Egbert Sturm, European Economic Review, Volume 104, pp. 38-67, 2018

Does increased economic policy uncertainty dampen investment of firms? We provide direct evidence on this question by examining the effects of an unexpectedly accepted and far-reaching referendum in Switzerland in February 2014. The outcome put several economically relevant agreements between Switzerland and its main trading partner, the European Union, at stake. Using firm-level panel data covering the 2009–2015 period and data from two special surveys levied shortly after the vote, we examine how the induced policy uncertainty affected investment of Swiss firms. Our Difference-in-Differences-in-Differences estimations and complementary survey results give strong evidence that the uncertainty caused by the vote dampened, as theoretically expected, investment of exposed firms with irreversible investment by as much as one quarter in the two years following the vote. Exposed firms that can reverse investment appear rather to increase investment in the year after the vote. Our survey evidence suggests that these firms engage in investment to streamline their production.

Exchange rate uncertainty and firm investment plans evidence from Swiss survey dataJournal articleGarret Binding et Andreas Dibiasi, Journal of Macroeconomics, Volume 51, pp. 1-27, 2017

A sudden change in monetary policy happened in Switzerland on January 15th, 2015. The Swiss National Bank removed the lower exchange rate bound vis-à-vis the Euro. We believe that uncertainty concerning a vital economic indicator as the exchange rate should influence economic activities. We argue that the unexpected removal of the lower bound induced a temporary uncertainty about future prices in foreign markets and believe that this influenced firm investment in the short term. We exploit the unexpected change in monetary policy as a natural experiment and use the continuous nature of business tendency surveys to determine the role of uncertainty in the immediate aftermath of the event. Changes in firm-level expectations are measured by specially designed survey questions. We use this information to disentangle first and second moment effects. We find that uncertainty negatively affects investment in equipment and machinery through real-option effects and believe that uncertainty positively influences expenditures in research and development through growth-option effects. Finally, we argue that focusing on aggregate gross fixed capital formation masks important insights and suggest the use of disaggregated investment data in future research on the relationship between uncertainty and investment.

The Reach of the Continental Blockade – The Case of ToulouseBook chapterAndreas Dibiasi, In: Globalization and the City : Two Connected Phenomena in Past and Present, Günter Bischof, Andreas Exenberger, James Mokhiber et Philipp Strobl (Eds.), 2013, pp. 179-190, innsbruck university press, 2013