POLICY UNCERTAINTY AND THE DEMAND FOR MONEY IN SINGAPORE: AN ASYMMETRIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

In search of a stable demand for money, almost all previous studies include two uncertainty measures captured by the volatility of the money supply and output. While in some countries, this yielded a stable demand for money, in some others, it did not. The latter was the case for Singapore. In this paper, we use a relatively more new and comprehensive measure of uncertainty known as policy uncertainty that is a news-based measure, and revisit the demand for money in Singapore. Our approach not only yields a stable demand for money in Singapore, but also reveals that the long-run effects of policy uncertainty on the demand for money are asymmetric. While increased uncertainty induces the public in Singapore to hold more money, decreased uncertainty does not affect.