While risk has a long tradition of being measured, especially in the field of finance, inferring its magnitude from the behavior of asset prices, uncertainty, being it a broader concept, has been more difficult to quantify. However, with the increased use of qualitative analysis, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, in recent years there have been important advances in this area, which have been factored into the statistical and analytical work of the CBC. Thus, the CBC has been using two indicators that, following international methodologies, seek to capture the degree of uncertainty related to economic decisions. Basically, these indicators measure the degree of attention on Twitter regarding economic issues, economic policies, the economic climate, or uncertainty regarding economic events. The underlying premise is that the more discussion and attention there is on a topic, the greater the dispersion of opinions and uncertainty about it. An analysis from 2012 onwards shows that these indicators tend to closely follow national and international events that presumably signify jumps of uncertainty. Examples are the recent United States elections, the Brexit referendum, international trade conflicts, the onset of the social crisis in October 2019 and the Covid-19 crisis playing out since March 2020. Page 11 of 27  The concept of uncertainty, due to the intrinsic difficulty of measuring it—especially at the micro level—is difficult to operationalize in specific economic decisions.
This will lead to a significant overshoot of the structural deficit planned for the year, which the government would formalize by invoking an “exit clause” from the committed fiscal targets. Although new official projections are not yet available, it seems clear that, despite  Page 2 of 27  the improved outlook for activity, this year’s fiscal impulse will not only exceed the forecast but will be significantly higher than in 2020. Despite the recovery of activity and the extension of fiscal packages, the overall economic sentiment worsened in recent months, with consumer expectations still in pessimistic ground. This could be explained by factors such as the evolution of infections and quarantines, and the heterogeneity observed in the recovery. About the latter, it stands out that the performance of part of services, construction and passenger transportation sectors is still not matching pre-pandemic levels, a milestone that trade and manufacturing achieved six months ago or before. Add to this the aforementioned heterogeneity in the labor market (Figure 6). Differences are observed in the case of business expectations, with smaller firms and hardest-hit sectors lagging behind in the recovery. The Business Perceptions Report (IPN) for May reported that smaller companies were the worst affected by the quarantines in March and April. In addition, the IPN noted that a significant percentage of companies were having second thoughts about their investment plans for this year or had simply decided to shelve them altogether. Uncertainty indicators remain high and well above those prior to the social crisis.