Fifteen years after the Global Financial Crisis: Recessions and Business Cycles in the History of Economic Thought

Who influences whom? Central bankers and economists during the 2008 crisis.

Tusset Gianfranco, University of Padua

During the 2008 crisis, who influenced whom? Did economists guide the fiscal policy positions of central bankers, or did central bankers impose their agenda on the debate among economists? The paper attempts to answer these questions by analyzing established attitudes and temporary sentiments found in the speeches of bankers belonging to six central banks (European Central Bank; Federal Reserve of the United States; Bank of England; Bank of Japan; Swedish Riksbank; and Reserve Bank of Australia) and in Discussion Papers published by Center for Economic Policy Research. Methodologically, both attitudes and sentiments are reconstructed through the lexical study of the speeches and discussion papers, better, by measuring and analyzing the frequency of words/sentence segments considered significant. Reconstructing the lexical time series should thus make it possible to determine which group among economists and central bankers "Granger causes" the other's debate. Early outcomes show that it is the central banks that most influence economists.

Area: Eshet Conference

Keywords: Text mining, attitude analysis, sentiment analysis, central bankers, CEPR discussion papers, Granger causality.

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