International Spillovers of Policy Uncertainty

Abstract: Using the Baker etal. (2013) index of policy uncertainty for six developed countries, this paper estimates spillovers of policy uncertainty. We find that spillovers account for slightly more than one-fourth of the dynamics of policy uncertainty in these countries, with this share rising to one half during the financial crisis. The US and UK are responsible for a large fraction of the spillovers since the financial crisis, while the remaining countries are all net receivers of policy uncertainty shocks during and after this period.