We quantify and study state-level economic policy uncertainty. Tapping digital archives for nearly 3,500 local newspapers, we construct three monthly indexes for each state: one that captures state and local sources of policy uncertainty (EPU-S), one that captures national and international...

We examine patterns of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) around national elections in 23 countries. Uncertainty shows a clear tendency to rise in the months leading up to elections. Average EPU values are 13% higher in the month of and the month prior to an election than in other months of the...

Building on Baker, Bloom and Davis (2016), I construct a monthly index of Global Economic Policy Uncertainty (GEPU) from January 1997. The GEPU Index is a GDP-weighted average of national EPU indices for 16 countries that account for two-thirds of global output. Each national EPU index reflects...

We develop a new index of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) based on newspaper coverage frequency. Several types of evidence - including human readings of 12,000 newspaper articles - indicate that our index proxies for movements in policy-related economic uncertainty. Our US index spikes near...

We describe the history of state pension policy in the UK since 1948 and calculate summary measures of the generosity of the system over time and the degree to which the it created implicit taxes on, or subsidies to, work at older ages. The time series of these measures, calculated separately...

We consider several economic uncertainty indicators for the US and UK before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: implied stock market volatility, newspaper-based economic policy uncertainty, twitter chatter about economic uncertainty, subjective uncertainty about future business growth, and...

This paper develops a framework to analyze the relationship between the diffusion of new technologies and the decentralization decisions of firms. Centralized control relies on the information of the principal, which we equate with publicly available information. However, the manager can use her...

How does firm entry affect innovation incentives and productivity growth in incumbent firms? Micro-data suggests that there is heterogeneity across industries--incumbents in technologically advanced industries react positively to foreign firm entry, but not in laggard industries. To explain this...

This paper investigates the determinants of vertical integration using data from the UK manufacturing sector. We find that the relationship between a downstream (producer) industry and an upstream (supplier) industry is more likely to be vertically integrated when the producing industry is more...

The late 1980s saw a major shift in pension provision in the United Kingdom, when for the first time individuals were permitted to opt out of part of the social security program into individual retirement saving accounts (Personal Pensions). At the same time, membership of company-provided...