FRED Expands World Uncertainty Index Data

FRED has added 286 new indicators of uncertainty, expanding the World Uncertainty Index portion of the Economic Policy Uncertainty release with indexes for individual countries. These indexes—developed by Hites Ahir (International Monetary Fund), Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University), and Davide Furceri (International Monetary Fund)—determine uncertainty using the frequency of the word “uncertainty” (and its variants) in the quarterly Economist Intelligence Unit country reports. The release tables have been updated to group the regional and individual country indexes.