Yo espero, tú esperas, ¿pero lo mismo?: descoordinación de expectativas, volatilidad económica y decisiones reales en Uruguay

This paper analyzes the relationship between disagreement in economic expectations, macroeconomic volatility, and real decisions on investment and consumption in Uruguay over the period 1999–2024. Although the country experienced a significant reduction in output volatility following the 2002–2003 crisis, the internal mechanisms underlying this stabilization—particularly those linked to the formation of expectations—remain largely unexplored. Drawing on three systematic surveys applied to industrial firms, consumers, and professional analysts, disagreement indicators are constructed based on the cross-sectional dispersion of responses. The empirical analysis employs vector autoregressive (VAR) models that integrate these indicators with a measure of volatility derived from the cyclical component of GDP and with real variables associated with the dynamics of consumption and investment. The results show that increases in expectation disagreement anticipate rises in output volatility. In turn, higher levels of volatility generate contractions in consumption and investment. Taken together, the findings suggest that expectation coordination constitutes a relevant factor for macroeconomic stability in small open economies.

Keywords: economic expectations; expectation disagreement; macroeconomic volatility; consumption; investment; Uruguay.