Search Results
Working Paper
The Economic Effects of Trade Policy Uncertainty
We study the effects of unexpected changes in trade policy uncertainty (TPU) on the U.S. economy. We construct three measures of TPU based on newspaper coverage, firms' earnings conference calls, and aggregate data on tari rates. We document that increases in TPU reduce investment and activity using both firm-level and aggregate macroeconomic data. We interpret the empirical results through the lens of a two-country general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities and firms' export participation decisions. In the model as in the data, news and increased uncertainty about higher future ...
Can Earnings Calls Be Used to Gauge Labor Market Tightness?
An index that uses textual analysis of earnings calls to track labor issues appears to be highly correlated to one measure of labor market tightness.
Discussion Paper
What Do Climate Risk Indices Measure?
As interest in understanding the economic impacts of climate change grows, the climate economics and finance literature has developed a number of indices to quantify climate risks. Various approaches have been employed, utilizing firm-level emissions data, financial market data (from equity and derivatives markets), or textual data. Focusing on the latter approach, we conduct descriptive analyses of six text-based climate risk indices from published or well-cited papers. In this blog post, we highlight the differences and commonalities across these indices.
Working Paper
Visible Hands: Professional Asset Managers' Expectations and the Stock Market in China
We study how professional fund managers' growth expectations affect the actions they take with respect to equity investment and in turn the effects on prices. Using novel data on China's mutual fund managers' growth expectations, we show that pessimistic managers decrease equity allocations and shift away from more-cyclical stocks. We identify a strong short-run causal effect of growth expectations on stock returns, despite statistically significant delays in price discovery from short-sale constraints. Finally, we find that an earnings-based measure of price informativeness is increasing in ...
Working Paper
Measuring Geopolitical Risk
We present a news-based measure of adverse geopolitical events and associated risks. The geopolitical risk (GPR) index spikes around the two world wars, at the beginning of the Korean War, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and after 9/11. Higher geopolitical risk foreshadows lower investment and employment and is associated with higher disaster probability and larger downside risks. The adverse consequences of the GPR index are driven by both the threat and the realization of adverse geopolitical events. We complement our aggregate measures with industry- and firm-level indicators of ...
Working Paper
The FOMC versus the Staff: Do Policymakers Add Value in Their Tales?
Using close to 40 years of textual data from FOMC transcripts and the Federal Reserve staff's Greenbook/Tealbook, we extend Romer and Romer (2008) to test if the FOMC adds information relative to its staff forecasts not via its own quantitative forecasts but via its words. We use methods from natural language processing to extract from both types of document text-based forecasts that capture attentiveness to and sentiment about the macroeconomy. We test whether these text-based forecasts provide value-added in explaining the distribution of outcomes for GDP growth, the unemployment rate, and ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy Expectations, Fund Managers, and Fund Returns: Evidence from China
Although many central banks in the 21st century have become more transparent, Chinese monetary policy communications have been relatively opaque, making it more difficult for financial market participants to make decisions that depend on the future path of interest rates. We conduct a novel systematic textual analysis of the discussion in the quarterly reports of China fund managers, from which we infer their near-term expectations for monetary policy. We construct an aggregate index of manager expectations and show that, as a forecast of Chinese monetary policy, it compares favorably with ...