Thore Schlaak


2019

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A Time Series Analysis of Emotional Loading in Central Bank Statements
Sven Buechel | Simon Junker | Thore Schlaak | Claus Michelsen | Udo Hahn
Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Economics and Natural Language Processing

We examine the affective content of central bank press statements using emotion analysis. Our focus is on two major international players, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed), covering a time span from 1998 through 2019. We reveal characteristic patterns in the emotional dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance and find—despite the commonly established attitude that emotional wording in central bank communication should be avoided—a correlation between the state of the economy and particularly the dominance dimension in the press releases under scrutiny and, overall, an impact of the president in office.