Google it up! A Google Trends-based Uncertainty Index for the United States and Australia

Efrem Castelnuovo and Trung Duc Tran
Additional contact information
Trung Duc Tran: University of Melbourne

No 223, "Marco Fanno" Working Papers from Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno"

Abstract: We develop uncertainty indices for the United States and Australia based on freely accessible, real time Google Trends data. Our Google Trends Uncertainty (GTU) indices are found to be positively correlated to a variety of alternative proxies for uncertainty available for these two countries. VAR investigations document an economically and statistically significant contribution to unemployment dynamics by GTU shocks in the United States. In contrast, the contribution of GTU shocks to unemployment dynamics in Australia is found to be much milder and substantially lower than that of monetary policy shocks.

Keywords: Google Trends Uncertainty indices; Uncertainty shocks; Unemployment dynamics; VAR analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E32 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://economia.unipd.it/sites/economia.unipd.it/files/20180223.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Google It Up! A Google Trends-based Uncertainty index for the United States and Australia (2017)
Working Paper: Google It Up! A Google Trends-based Uncertainty Index for the United States and Australia (2017)
Working Paper: Google It Up! A Google Trends-Based Uncertainty Index for the United States and Australia (2017)
Working Paper: Google It Up! A Google Trends-based Uncertainty Index for the United States and Australia (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pad:wpaper:0223

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in "Marco Fanno" Working Papers from Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno" Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Raffaele Dei Campielisi ().