Utilizing a unique firm-level survey in Japan that contains five-bin forecasts for sales, we document three findings. First, firm-level subjective uncertainty is highly and positively related to volatility of past firm growth. Second, there are substantial variations in subjective uncertainty across firms, with a long right tail with extremely high subjective uncertainty. In addition, firms that have exposure to international businesses either through international trade or foreign direct investment have both higher average expected sales and subjective uncertainty. Finally, the sudden escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic in January–February 2020 led to a substantial increase in firms’ subjective uncertainty. Our triple-difference estimation results show that this effect is especially large for firms that have direct exposure to China through international trade and foreign direct investment.

利用日本一项独特的公司层面的调查，其中包含对销售的五项预测，我们记录了三个发现。首先，公司层面的主观不确定性与过去公司增长的波动性高度正相关。其次，不同公司的主观不确定性存在很大差异，右尾较长，主观不确定性极高。此外，通过国际贸易或外国直接投资接触国际业务的公司具有较高的平均预期销售额和主观不确定性。最后，2020 年 1 月至 2020 年 2 月 COVID-19 大流行的突然升级导致公司的主观不确定性大幅增加。