The Macroeconomic Effects of Fiscal Policy Uncertainty around the World

How adverse is the impact of fiscal policy uncertainty on economic and financial variables? To answer this question, we construct a novel cross-country database of news-based fiscal policy uncertainty indicators. Importantly, we track fiscal events that attract global attention, which we refer to as “global” fiscal policy uncertainty. We find that heightened fiscal policy uncertainty triggers contractionary effects, lowering industrial production in both advanced and emerging market economies. It also raises sovereign borrowing costs, generates synchronous movements in global financial variables including risk aversion, and strengthens the US dollar, even after accounting for US monetary policy shocks.