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Trade uncertainty does influence the firm’s new investment, profitability and supply chain finance. Consequently, it results in decreased consumption and low consumer confidence and eventually disrupts global economic activity. This paper aims to propose a model to uncover the effects of trade policy uncertainty (TPU) on the real economic activity and economy’s health measured in terms of the purchasing manager’s index (PMI).

This study uses the PMI, trade policy uncertainty index, economic policy uncertainty index and short-term interest rate. The relation between economic activity and uncertainty was studied using nested regression and vector autoregressive model.

The empirical results show that PMI of China and Japan were more responsive to the TPU of the USA and remained more fluctuating during the year 2018–2019. Importantly, this paper notices that the US’s PMI reached a low historically subject to its own trade policy and tension with China. Overall, TPU has shown more pronounced effects on PMI across China, Japan and the USA, followed by important economic and political events and major trade tariff uncertainty deals.

The empirical outcome holds some practical implications trade uncertainty affects not only the economic health of the economy but also market participants, global investors and international political environment, recent trade barriers, tariff wars and ambiguity raise question about free and fair global trade and competitiveness of the member country of the world trade organization.

The work is a novel that attempts to explain economic activity and supply chain through PMI. Unlike conventional economic indicators, e.g. gross domestic product, producer price index, consumer price index, employment, etc. PMI measures manufacturing industries’ overall status concerning the number of orders, inventory levels, productions, supplier deliveries and employment.

This study analyses the impact of economic and trade policy uncertainty on US and Chinese stock markets. Also, this study examines the hedge and safe-haven properties of US and China stocks against both US and Chinese economic and trade policy uncertainty.

To achieve the desired goals, the authors employ Dynamic Conditional Correlation through Glosten et al. (1993) model based on the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (DCC-GJR-GARCH (1, 1)) and Quantile cross-spectral (QS) models. The study uses monthly observations spanning from March 2010 to June 2022.

This study evidence that the economic and trade policy uncertainty between USA and China is extremely sensitive and has high volatility clustering effects on DJChina88 and DJUS, respectively. Conversely, against the Chinese economic and trade policy uncertainty, the US stock market indexes show both hedging properties across the period and safe-haven during COVID-19 and Russia–Ukraine crises. In contrast, among the Chinese stock markets, only DJShenzhen and DJShanghai stock indices might provide strong hedging and safe-haven properties against the US economic and trade policy uncertainties; however, DJShenzhen (DJChina88) stock shows weak hedge and safe-haven properties (hedging benefits) against Chinese trade policy uncertainty (CTPU) (Chinese economic policy uncertainty [CEPU]).

The findings have significant implications for investors, portfolio managers and regulators in hedging and making proper decisions under uncertain circumstances.

The study extends the literature on stock market performance to cover the economic and trade policy uncertainty by providing novel evidence during the recent COVID-19 and Russia–Ukraine invasion.

The recent dynamics of trade policy, especially that is associated with the United States of America (USA) and China, has not only triggered policy adjustments in two economies, it has also implied an uncertainty spillover to other economies across the globe. Consequently, the current study attempts to examine the effect of uncertainties in the USA–China trade policies on stock market indexes. In addition, the cointegration evidence between the USA–China trade policy uncertainty index and of the leading Global South fragile quintet (Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, India and Turkey) stock market indices is investigated.

Mainly, the FMOLS and DOLS Granger causality analysis with cointegration coefficient estimators were employed for the dataset over the monthly data period of March 2003 and July 2019.

Accordingly, the study found a long-term relationship between the USA–China Trade Policy Uncertainty index and the stock exchange indexes. In addition, a causal relationship was established from the change in the USA–China Trade Policy Uncertainty index to the change in the stock market indexes of almost all of the examined countries (Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, India and Turkey). In addition, the nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach further offers evidence of asymmetric relationship among the examined indicators.

Moreover, this study contributed to the existing literature because it employed the indexes of BIST100, BOVESPA, BSE Sensex 30, IDX Composite and South Africa 40 in a novel approach. Thus, the study posited a useful policy guideline for associated economic uncertainties arising from the trade dispute, such as the case of the world’s two largest trading giants or partners (i.e. the USA and China).

Purpose: This chapter looks specifically at the sources of economic policy uncertainty in Nigeria, and discusses their impact on the Nigerian economy while drawing implications for Africa. It identifies factors that transmit uncertainty in economic policy in Nigeria and draw implications for other African countries.

Methodology: This chapter uses a literature survey methodology to identify the sources of economic policy uncertainty in Nigeria.

Findings: The identified sources of economic policy uncertainty in Nigeria are: the frequent changes in central bank policy, unexpected changes in government policy, political interference, unexpected fall in global oil price, recession, and unethical practices.

Implications: The implication of the study is that rising economic policy uncertainty in Nigeria can have a significant effect on the Nigerian economy and for connected African countries.

Originality: Previous studies have not examined the sources of economic policy uncertainty in Nigeria.

Recent empirical studies by Antonakakis, Chatziantoniou and Filis (2013), Brogaard and Detzel (2015) and Christou et al. (2017) present evidence, which supports the notion that a rise in economic policy uncertainty (EPU) will lead to a decline in stock prices. The purpose of this paper is to examine US categorical policy uncertainty on stock returns while controlling for implied volatility and downside risk. In addition to the domestic impacts of policy uncertainty, this paper also presents evidence that changes in US policy uncertainty promptly propagates to the global stock markets.

This study uses a GED-GARCH (1, 1) model to estimate changes of uncertainties in US monetary, fiscal and trade policies on stock returns for the sample period of January 1990–December 2018. Robustness test is conducted by using different set of data and modeling techniques.

This paper contributes to the literature in several aspects. First, testing of US aggregate data while controlling for downside risk and implied volatility, consistently, shows that responses of stock prices to US policy uncertainty changes, not only display a negative effect in the current period but also have at least a one-month time-lag. The evidence supports the uncertainty premium hypothesis. Second, extending the test to global data reveals that US policy uncertainty changes have a negative impact on markets in Europe, China and Japan. Third, testing the data in sectoral stock markets mainly displays statistically significant results with a negative sign. Fourth, the evidence consistently shows that changes in policy uncertainty present an inverse relation to the stock returns, regardless of whether uncertainty is moving upward or downward.

The current research is limited to the markets in the USA, eurozone, China and Japan. This study can be extended to additional countries, such as emerging markets.

This paper provides a model that uses categorical policy uncertainty approach to explain stock price changes. The parametric estimates provide insightful information in advising investors for making portfolio decision.

The estimated coefficients of changes in monetary policy uncertainty, fiscal policy uncertainty and trade policy uncertainty are informative in assisting policymakers to formulate effective financial policies.

This study extends the existing risk premium model in several directions. First, it separates the financial risk factors from the EPU innovations; second, instead of using EPU, this study investigates the effects from monetary policy, fiscal policy and trade policy uncertainties; third, in additional to an examination of the effects of US categorical policy uncertainties on its own markets, this study also investigates the spillover effects to global major markets; fourth, besides the aggregate stock markets, this study estimates the effects of US policy uncertainty innovations on the sectoral stock returns.

This investigation aims to determine the effect of trade uncertainty on domestic investment (DI) and foreign direct investment (FDI) for the Turkish economy from the first quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of 2020.

The authors adopt the vector autoregression (VAR) model augmented with Fourier terms. Using this methodology, the authors obtain the empirical results of the impulse-response functions and the variance decomposition analysis.

The empirical results demonstrate that a shock to trade uncertainty has a slight negative impact on DI for up to approximately 1.5 years, whereas its impact on FDI is negative but long-lasting. Moreover, the contribution of trade uncertainty to FDI is relatively higher than to DI in the error variance decomposition for the investigated period. These empirical results can be beneficial for shaping the Turkish authorities' trade policies in the following periods.

These findings have implications within the macroeconomic setting. Government authorities can provide tax exemptions for specified sectors and debureaucratize investment processes for both domestic and foreign entrepreneurs. Additionally, institutional quality and property rights should be protected strictly and developed gradually.

This study is the first to examine the impact of world trade uncertainty on Türkiye’s DI and FDI. Because trade uncertainty might act as fixed costs, this creates the option value of waiting and seeing the market, and firms hesitate to incur investment.

The purpose of this paper to examine how global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU) affects export flows of emerging market economies.

This study examines the effect of GEPU on 28 emerging markets' export performance. GEPU variable used in the authors’ empirical analysis is measured by partial least square (PLS) factor loading model with the help of 24 countries' economic policy uncertainty index. A panel vector autoregression (VAR) model is employed for the estimations and monthly data over the 2006:01–2019:12 period are used.

The empirical findings show that while the real external income is the main factor that affects export flows, the real exchange rate is the least effective variable with regard to the variance decomposition, which is not expected by the related economic theory. Panel VAR estimations results confirm the previous studies and find that GEPU affects export flows negatively and significantly.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the sole study in terms of focusing on the impacts of GEPU on the export volume of emerging markets. The contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, a large set of countries with monthly frequented data that assist to capture uncertainties better is used. Secondly, the global economic policy index is obtained by employing the PLS method, which provides more robust results that are calculated with respect to the dependent variable.

This study examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on investment decision-making of start-up firms in Japan. While existing literature suggests firms generally retrench investment under EPU, the authors argue that start-ups’ investment behaviours are likely different given the fact that start-ups always have to compete for survival.

The authors investigate the impact of general economic policy and policy-specific uncertainty, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, trade policy and exchange rate policy uncertainty, on corporate investment of start-up firms using multiple fixed-effect regression. A wide range of robustness and endogeneity tests are conducted to ensure the validity and soundness of the empirical findings.

The authors document a positive effect of EPU on start-up investment, to suggesting that the investment behaviour of start-ups is backed by venture capital distinct from that of mature firms. The results show that start-ups are more vulnerable during the changes in trade and exchange rate policies; uncertainties in monetary and fiscal policies do not restrain firms' investment. However, the effect varies in the cross-sections. Financial constraints have a moderating effect on the relation-ship between EPU on start-up investment. Institutional investors have an incremental effect on the positive relationship between EPU and start-up investment by encouraging risky investments.

This is the first study to investigate how start-up investment is influenced by EPU, thus providing a new understanding of the investment behaviour of start-up firms during uncertainty. Further investigation sheds light on the roles of institutional and managerial ownership in this newfound relationship.

This study finds evidence that a stock return is inversely correlated with downside risk, confirming a pattern of risk-aversion behavior. Evidence from testing a stock return's response to a change in economic policy uncertainty indicates a significantly negative effect in the Chinese stock market; this conclusion holds true for testing the impacts of changes in fiscal and monetary policy uncertainties. However, the data produce a mixed effect for the change in fiscal policy uncertainty. The evidence produced from examining the geopolitical effect on the stock market strongly supports the presence of an adverse effect on stock market performance.

This study aims to investigate the influences of global uncertainty indicators volatility on the domestic socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability in a sample of 54 developing countries.

The two-step system generalized method of moments estimator is recruited to deal with autoregression and endogeneity matter in our dynamic panel data. Seven different global uncertainty indicators (US trade uncertainty; world trade uncertainty; economic policy uncertainty; world commodities and oil prices; the geopolitical risk index and the world uncertainty index) have been mobilized and compared for their empirical impact on the economic (growth and GDP), social (the misery index and income inequality) and environmental (CO₂ emissions) vulnerabilities of nations.

Our empirical estimations suggest that the socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability cannot be solved through the same pattern: all decrease of a particular aspect will necessarily have a cost and an opposite influence on at least one of the other aspects of the nations' vulnerability.

The originality of this article is to combine these three dimensions of vulnerability in the same investigation. To our knowledge, our research is one of the few providing a joint analysis of the influence of global uncertainty on the economic and socioenvironmental countries' vulnerabilities – given the fact social, economic and environmental aspects are at the heart of the UN sustainable goals, our study can be seen as an investigation of the nations' capabilities to work proactively on meaningful sustainable goals in an increasingly uncertain world.