Characterizing very high uncertainty episodes

•We identify episodes of very high uncertainty for the US economy using a Markov-switching model.•Very high uncertainty episodes are associated with weaker growth and sharp declines in stock prices.•High uncertainty may have played an important role in the low growth performance of the US economy in recent years.

This paper uses a two-step approach to characterize the evolution of US macroeconomic and financial variables during episodes of very high uncertainty. First, we identify episodes of very high uncertainty using a regime-switching model. Second, we assess the behavior of macroeconomic and financial variables during these episodes of very high uncertainty. This methodology is analogous to the approach followed by Baele et al. (2012), who study episodes of flights to safety in financial markets. We find that very high uncertainty episodes are associated with a weaker growth performance and sharp declines in stock prices.