Do pandemics have an asymmetric effect on tourism in Italy?

In this study, the asymmetric Granger causality relationship between tourist arrivals and world pandemic uncertainty index is examined by controlling inflation, consumer confidence index, and industrial production for the period 2000M1 and 2020M1 in Italy. To the best of our knowledge, the current study is one of the few studies to investigate the relationship between tourist arrivals and world pandemic uncertainty in an asymmetric framework. The empirical results show that using the Granger causality test in a linear framework causes bias results due to misspecification. Therefore, the study relies on asymmetric Granger causality test results which reveal that the positive shock of world pandemic uncertainty Granger causes a negative shock of tourist arrivals. It is suggested that international tourist arrivals are sensitive to external shocks such as pandemics and in such instances the government of the concerned country can insulate the tourism-service and hospitality industry against the shocks by developing strategies to promote full information between all stakeholders.

Is domestic uncertainty a local pull factor driving foreign capital inflows? New cross-country evidence

Foreign investors pay attention to economic and political developments in the recipient country and might decide to postpone or divert their investments when uncertainty increases. However, due to the limited availability of cross-country uncertainty data, empirical evidence on this channel is scarce. This paper provides a systematic analysis of how bank credit, portfolio debt, and portfolio equity capital inflows from 51 source countries into 143 recipient countries react to an increase in political and economic uncertainty in the recipient country, proxied using the World Uncertainty Index. Our results suggest that an increase in uncertainty induces a substantial and persistent decrease in bank credit and portfolio debt inflows, and (to a lesser extent) in equity inflows. We also uncover important heterogeneities in the response of portfolio inflows. First, the effects are larger for developing economies and those with more open capital markets. Second, inflows through actively managed mutual funds are similarly sensitive to changes in uncertainty that are country-specific (purely local uncertainty) and common across countries (global uncertainty), while inflows through passive ETFs are only sensitive to changes in global uncertainty. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

The world uncertainty index and GDP growth rate

Based on the content of the novel World Uncertainty Index (WUI), this paper examines whether the World Uncertainty Index has the predictability for the U.S. gross domestic product growth rate. Empirical results show that the information of WUI indices is able to predict GDP growth rate, especially the U.S. WUI indices such as USA WUI (frequency) and USA WUI (total number) indices. During the COVID-19 period, we find that all the WUI models can generate stronger forecasting ability for the GDP growth rate. Our paper tries to provide new evidence for predicting the GDP growth rate.