Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible asymmetric response of inflation expectations to oil price and policy uncertainty shocks. Design/methodology/approach The authors used the test of asymmetric impulse responses proposed by Kilian and Vigfusson (2011) to explore the issue of asymmetry. Findings Unlike other studies that assume symmetric effects, this study finds asymmetric effects of oil price and policy uncertainty on inflation expectations for positive and negative shocks and for pre- and post-financial-crisis periods. In particular other things being same, a same magnitude oil price shock has greater effect on inflation expectations in post-crisis period than in pre-crisis period. Moreover, in post-crisis period a positive increasing oil price shock has greater effect on inflation expectations than a negative decreasing oil price shock. Practical implications The paper concludes that FED’s greater focus on output stabilization since financial crisis has made inflation expectations less anchored and a sudden surge in oil price may quickly trigger inflation through inflation expectations. Originality/value Exploring the issue of the possible asymmetric effects of oil price and economic policy uncertainty on inflation expectations is a relatively new topic (as other studies only assumed symmetry and did not investigate the possible asymmetry in this regard).

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PurposeThis study aims to investigate the nature and degree of US economic policy uncertainty spillover on the stock markets of a group of non-conventional economies like the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where a risk-sharing-based financial system is prominent and foreign investment, risk-free interest, derivatives, etc. are not as widespread as in the western economies.Design/methodology/approachthe monthly data of 1992–2018, linear and nonlinear structural vector autoregression (VAR) model, and an impulse response-based test to explore the nature and degree of US economic policy uncertainty spillover on the stock markets of the GCC countries.FindingsThis study finds that an unexpected increase in the US economic policy uncertainty significantly decreases the stock market index of all the GCC countries. This study also gets this relationship symmetric, meaning that the GCC stock market indices decrease and increase by the same amount when the US economic policy uncertainty increases and decreases, respectively.Originality/valueThis study investigates the characteristics of economic policy uncertainty spillover from the biggest economy of the world to the stock markets of the GCC region, which is new to the literature. The study results provide the first evidence that a risk-sharing based financial system does not necessarily protect the stock market from US uncertainty shock. However, the abundance of local investors, risk-sharing investment activities, the absence of derivatives, etc. may be responsible for the symmetric behavior of a stock market.

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