Sheila Dow () (Department of Economics, University of Stirling) Matthias Klaes () (Keele University, Centre for Economic Research) Alberto Montagnoli () (Department of Economics, University of Stirling)
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This paper analyses the signal uncertainty implicit in the communications of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). Unlike previous studies, which seek to construct a qualitative uncertainty index that heavily relies on subjective interpretations of key expressions, we limit ourselves to lexical frequencies of those expressions. We establish seasonality in the term 'risk' that coincides with Inflation Report publication dates, and matches what we identify as a surprising degree of prima facie seasonality in interest rate changes. Our findings suggest that frequencies of key terms expressing signal uncertainty in MPC minutes may either yield proxy measures to the amount of information at the disposal of the MPC, or offer evidence for the presence of an irreducible kind of signal uncertainty that shows up as white noise, casting doubt on the soundness of the various qualitative uncertainty indices found in the literature.
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Paper provided by Centre for Economic Research, Keele University in its series Keele Economics Research Papers with number
KERP 2007/05.
Length: 29 pages Date of creation: Feb 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:kee:kerpuk:2007/05
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics, University of Keele, Keele, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG - United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0)1782 584581 Fax: +44 (0)1782 717577 Email: Web page: http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ec/cer/ More information through EDIRC
Order Information: Postal: Centre for Economic Research, Research Institute for Public Policy and Management, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG - United Kingdom Email: Web: http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ec/cer/pubs_kerps.htm
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
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