That’s the title of an article by Cascaldi-Garcia et al. (2023) within the Journal of Financial Literature. I summarize among the key findings beneath.
Definitions:
- Danger: Applies to conditions during which the
end result is unknown to determination makers, however the likelihood distribution
governing the result is thought” - Volatility. Usually used synonymously with
threat, volatility is a statistical measure of the variation in noticed outcomes - Uncertainty. Characterised by each an
unknown end result and an unknown likelihood distribution
Be aware the important thing distinction between threat and uncertainty. Citing Caballero 2010, the article notes:
When brokers notice that their assumptions about threat are not legitimate and circumstances of uncertainty apply, their worry about surprising losses can ravage monetary markets.
Beneath I summarize 4 alternative ways to measure uncertainty: (i) news-based, (ii) survey-based, (iii) asset-based, and (iv) econometric.
Information-based measures.
This strategy makes use of mentions of several types of threat and
newspapers and different media as a quantitative measure of uncertainty. Examples embrace financial coverage uncertainty
(EPU) index developed by Baker, Bloom,
and Davis (2016), index of financial coverage uncertainty (MPU) developed by Husted,
Rogers and Solar (2020), and a commerce insurance policies uncertainty (TPU) index
developed by Caldara
et al. (2020). Ahir, Bloom and Furceri (2022) created
a World Uncertainty Index (WUI), which is a GDP-weighted common of
country-level uncertainty indexes.
Of explicit curiosity, the Baker, Bloom and David article constructed
“…a health-care EPU index by looking
for articles that debate rising EPU in addition to phrases similar to ‘well being care,’ ‘Medicaid,’
‘Medicare,’ ‘medical health insurance,’ ‘reasonably priced care act,’ and ‘medical insurance coverage
reform’.”
The strategy is beneficial as it could actually have a look at future threat—particularly geopolitical—however is probably going biased in the direction of the notion of editorship at main media corporations. Additional, causation could also be problematic because the suggestion of extra (or much less) threat at main media entities could affect public perceptions.
Survey-based strategy.
This strategy asks people to think about quite a lot of
totally different situations and place a likelihood related to every. Then one can measure uncertainty primarily based on the
customary deviation of the responses within the survey. Ex-ante measures sometimes
ask respondents about level predictions (e.g., imply expectation) of future
occasions (e.g., inflation, GDP, gross sales development) at a future time interval.
Aggregating particular person responses permits for the estimation of a measure of the
dispersion throughout respondents concerning the purpose prediction. This calculates
uncertainty throughout people. Different surveys additionally ask people in regards to the likelihood
of sure occasions occurring and thus can get inside particular person uncertainty as
nicely. Ex-post measures of uncertainty in contrast deviations of current financial
knowledge releases from consensus expectations.
Like all metrics of uncertainty,
these have each execs and cons.
“…survey-based measures enable precision in regards to the
sector during which the uncertainty is situated (e.g., companies, households, or
merchants), the financial measure (e.g., employment, expenditures, coverage), and
the horizon over which the uncertainty prevails. Nonetheless, these measures have a tendency
to be obtainable at a decrease frequency and therefore presumably stale relative to, say,
news-based or market-based measures.”
Econometric approaches.
Econometric approaches use knowledge estimation methods and
equate uncertainty with lack of predictability of mixture exercise. One measure
of uncertainty is value-at-risk (VaR), which is outlined as a threshold such
that the likelihood of a selected end result not exceeding this threshold is
equal to a desired degree. The
chances are sometimes computed primarily based on quantile regressions. Extra broadly:
“In comparison with different measures of uncertainty, econometric-based measures have the benefit of being immediately grounded in—and guided by—statistical inference, they usually mirror the “massive image” in the identical sense as news-based measures. Nonetheless, econometric-based measures can be found at decrease frequencies and could also be considerably totally different when estimated on ex publish revised knowledge versus real-time knowledge” The article cites a paper by Jurado, Ludvigson, and Ng (2015), which makes use of a factor-augmented forecasting mannequin as follows:
Asset-based measures
Historic volatility in asset returns and rates of interest is
one option to measure. Asset-based measures are inclined to mirror the view of market
members actively buying and selling in a single explicit asset market and thus could solely
be pricing in threat that impacts that individual asset.
“One broadly used uncertainty measure is the VIX, the Chicago
Board of Choices Alternate’s (CBOE) Volatility Index, an index calculated utilizing
fairness index choices and measuring market members’ expectations for the
volatility of the S&P 500 index over the approaching 30 days.”
The formulation for VIX is as follows:
One other measure is realized volatility (RV), which is outlined
because the scaled sum of squared each day returns. RV is taken into account to be an enchancment
over generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH). As
asset primarily based measures usually have giant pattern measurement and are regularly measured,
one can readily seize increased order moments as nicely (e.g., skewness and kurtosis).
Conclusion
The assessment paper sadly doesn’t contact a lot on well being—besides as how COVID-19 impacted the worldwide economic system and the well being care EPU by Baker et al.—however nonetheless it does present a healthful overview of risk-related metrics. These empirical approaches for measuring threat utilizing numerous sources (information, surveys, econometric approaches, and asset costs)–may readily be tailored for well being care functions, particularly the information and survey-based measures.
