IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/dyncon/v100y2019icp230-250.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Strategic central bank communication: Discourse analysis of the Bank of Japan’s Monthly Report

Author

Listed:
  • Kawamura, Kohei
  • Kobashi, Yohei
  • Shizume, Masato
  • Ueda, Kozo

Abstract

We conduct a discourse analysis of the Bank of Japan’s Monthly Report and examine its characteristics in relation to business cycles. We find that ambiguous expressions tend to appear more frequently with negative expressions, and this tendency is more pronounced in recessions. This suggests that the central bank communicates strategically by obfuscating the reports when their private information is unfavorable.

Suggested Citation

  • Kawamura, Kohei & Kobashi, Yohei & Shizume, Masato & Ueda, Kozo, 2019. "Strategic central bank communication: Discourse analysis of the Bank of Japan’s Monthly Report," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 230-250.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:100:y:2019:i:c:p:230-250
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2018.11.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188919300065
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jedc.2018.11.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benjamin Born & Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher, 2014. "Central Bank Communication on Financial Stability," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(577), pages 701-734, June.
    2. David H. Romer & Christina D. Romer, 2000. "Federal Reserve Information and the Behavior of Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 429-457, June.
    3. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon, 2016. "Shocking Language: Understanding the Macroeconomic Effects of Central Bank Communication," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2015, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Dye, Ra, 1985. "Disclosure Of Nonproprietary Information," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 123-145.
    5. Goodfriend, Marvin, 1986. "Monetary mystique: Secrecy and central banking," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 63-92, January.
    6. Scott Hendry, 2012. "Central Bank Communication or the Media’s Interpretation: What Moves Markets?," Staff Working Papers 12-9, Bank of Canada.
    7. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon & Andrea Prat, 2018. "Transparency and Deliberation Within the FOMC: A Computational Linguistics Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 801-870.
    8. Scott Hendry & Alison Madeley, 2010. "Text Mining and the Information Content of Bank of Canada Communications," Staff Working Papers 10-31, Bank of Canada.
    9. David‐Jan Jansen, 2011. "Does The Clarity Of Central Bank Communication Affect Volatility In Financial Markets? Evidence From Humphrey‐Hawkins Testimonies," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 29(4), pages 494-509, October.
    10. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    11. G. C. Montes & R. T. F. Nicolay, 2017. "Does clarity of central bank communication affect credibility? Evidences considering governor-specific effects," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(32), pages 3163-3180, July.
    12. Kyle Jurado & Sydney C. Ludvigson & Serena Ng, 2015. "Measuring Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1177-1216, March.
    13. Eijffinger, Sylvester C.W. & Geraats, Petra M., 2006. "How transparent are central banks?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 1-21, March.
    14. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    15. Miguel Acosta, 2015. "FOMC Responses to Calls for Transparency," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-60, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Fujiwara, Ippei, 2005. "Is the central bank's publication of economic forecasts influential?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 255-261, December.
    17. Tomz, Michael & Van Houweling, Robert P., 2009. "The Electoral Implications of Candidate Ambiguity," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(1), pages 83-98, February.
    18. Hamza Bennani & Matthias Neuenkirch, 2017. "The (home) bias of European central bankers: new evidence based on speeches," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(11), pages 1114-1131, March.
    19. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2018. "Central Bank Forward Guidance and the Signal Value of Market Prices," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 572-577, May.
    20. Barbara Rossi & Tatevik Sekhposyan, 2015. "Macroeconomic Uncertainty Indices Based on Nowcast and Forecast Error Distributions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 650-655, May.
    21. David Bholat & Stephen Hans & Pedro Santos & Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, 2015. "Text mining for central banks," Handbooks, Centre for Central Banking Studies, Bank of England, number 33, April.
    22. Hal R. Varian, 2014. "Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(2), pages 3-28, Spring.
    23. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2002. "Social Value of Public Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1521-1534, December.
    24. Hamza Bennani & Matthias Neuenkirch, 2017. "The (home) bias of European central bankers: new evidence based on speeches," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(11), pages 1114-1131, March.
    25. Jennifer Brown & Tanjim Hossain & John Morgan, 2010. "Shrouded Attributes and Information Suppression: Evidence from the Field," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 859-876.
    26. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2005. "Central Bank Transparency and the Signal Value of Prices," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 36(2), pages 1-66.
    27. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    28. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2011. "When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis, Dictionaries, and 10‐Ks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 35-65, February.
    29. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    30. Stein, Jeremy C, 1989. "Cheap Talk and the Fed: A Theory of Imprecise Policy Announcements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 32-42, March.
    31. Li, Feng, 2008. "Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 221-247, August.
    32. Apel, Mikael & Blix Grimaldi, Marianna, 2012. "The Information Content of Central Bank Minutes," Working Paper Series 261, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    33. Scott Deerwester & Susan T. Dumais & George W. Furnas & Thomas K. Landauer & Richard Harshman, 1990. "Indexing by latent semantic analysis," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 41(6), pages 391-407, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mario Gonzalez & Raul Cruz Tadle, 2022. "Monetary policy press releases: an international comparison," BIS Working Papers 1023, Bank for International Settlements.
    2. Paloviita, Maritta & Haavio, Markus & Jalasjoki, Pirkka & Kilponen, Juha & Vänni, Ilona, 2020. "Reading between the lines : Using text analysis to estimate the loss function of the ECB," Research Discussion Papers 12/2020, Bank of Finland.
    3. Haavio, Markus & Heikkinen, Joni & Jalasjoki, Pirkka & Kilponen, Juha & Paloviita, Maritta & Vänni, Ilona, 2024. "Reading between the lines: Uncovering asymmetry in the central bank loss function," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 6/2024, Bank of Finland.
    4. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/jpcu0knbl80rpibin9slrlrlb is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2020_012 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Jianhao Lin & Jiacheng Fan & Yifan Zhang & Liangyuan Chen, 2023. "Real‐time macroeconomic projection using narrative central bank communication," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(2), pages 202-221, March.
    7. Andreas Eisl, 2020. "The Ambiguous Consensus on Fiscal Rules," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03053976, HAL.
    8. Paloviita, Maritta & Haavio, Markus & Jalasjoki, Pirkka & Kilponen, Juha & Vänni, Ilona, 2020. "Reading between the lines: Using text analysis to estimate the loss function of the ECB," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 12/2020, Bank of Finland.
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/jpcu0knbl80rpibin9slrlrlb is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Mario Gonzalez & Raul Cruz Tadle, 2021. "Monetary Policy Press Releases: An International Comparison," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 912, Central Bank of Chile.
    11. Eisl, Andreas, 2020. "The ambiguous consensus on fiscal rules: How ideational ambiguity has facilitated social democratic parties' support of structural deficit rules in the eurozone," MaxPo Discussion Paper Series 20/4, Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo).
    12. Andreas Eisl, 2020. "The Ambiguous Consensus on Fiscal Rules," Working Papers hal-03053976, HAL.
    13. Amrendra Pandey & Jagadish Shettigar & Amarnath Bose, 2021. "Evaluation of the Inflation Forecasting Process of the Reserve Bank of India: A Text Analysis Approach," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kohei Kawamura & Yohei Kobashi & Masato Shizume & Kozo Ueda, 2016. "Strategic central bank communication: discourse and game-theoretic analyses of the Bank of Japan's Monthly Report," CAMA Working Papers 2016-11, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    2. Hansen, Stephen & McMahon, Michael & Tong, Matthew, 2019. "The long-run information effect of central bank communication," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 185-202.
    3. Donato Masciandaro & Davide Romelli & Gaia Rubera, 2021. "Monetary policy and financial markets: evidence from Twitter traffic," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 21160, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    4. Youngjoon Lee & Soohyon Kim & Ki Young Park, 2018. "Deciphering Monetary Policy Committee Minutes with Text Mining Approach: A Case of South Korea," Working papers 2018rwp-132, Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute.
    5. Hubert, Paul & Labondance, Fabien, 2021. "The signaling effects of central bank tone," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    6. Miguel Acosta, 2015. "FOMC Responses to Calls for Transparency," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-60, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. van der Cruijsen, C.A.B., 2008. "The economic impact of central bank transparency," Other publications TiSEM 86c1ba91-1952-45b4-adac-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. van der Cruijsen, C.A.B. & Eijffinger, S.C.W., 2007. "The Economic Impact of Central Bank Transparency : A Survey," Discussion Paper 2007-06, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    9. David Bholat & Stephen Hans & Pedro Santos & Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, 2015. "Text mining for central banks," Handbooks, Centre for Central Banking Studies, Bank of England, number 33, April.
    10. Munday, Tim & Brookes, James, 2021. "Mark my words: the transmission of central bank communication to the general public via the print media," Bank of England working papers 944, Bank of England.
    11. Mikael Apel & Marianna Blix Grimaldi & Isaiah Hull, 2022. "How Much Information Do Monetary Policy Committees Disclose? Evidence from the FOMC's Minutes and Transcripts," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 54(5), pages 1459-1490, August.
    12. Antón Sarabia Arturo & Bazdresch Santiago & Lelo-de-Larrea Alejandra, 2023. "The Influence of Central Bank's Projections and Economic Narrative on Professional Forecasters' Expectations: Evidence from Mexico," Working Papers 2023-21, Banco de México.
    13. Husted, Lucas & Rogers, John & Sun, Bo, 2020. "Monetary policy uncertainty," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 20-36.
    14. Picault, Matthieu & Renault, Thomas, 2017. "Words are not all created equal: A new measure of ECB communication," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 136-156.
    15. Petra M. Geraats, 2006. "Transparency of Monetary Policy: Theory and Practice," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 52(1), pages 111-152, March.
    16. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon, 2016. "Shocking Language: Understanding the Macroeconomic Effects of Central Bank Communication," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2015, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Baranowski, Pawel & Bennani, Hamza & Doryń, Wirginia, 2021. "Do the ECB's introductory statements help predict monetary policy? Evidence from a tone analysis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    18. Parle, Conor, 2022. "The financial market impact of ECB monetary policy press conferences — A text based approach," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    19. Nicolò Fraccaroli & Alessandro Giovannini & Jean-François Jamet & Eric Persson, 2023. "Central Banks in Parliaments: A Text Analysis of the Parliamentary Hearings of the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the Federal Reserve," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 19(2), pages 543-600, June.
    20. Nicholas Apergis & Ioannis Pragidis, 2019. "Stock Price Reactions to Wire News from the European Central Bank: Evidence from Changes in the Sentiment Tone and International Market Indexes," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 25(1), pages 91-112, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary policy; Transparency; Natural language processing; Modality; Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA); Verifiable disclosure model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:100:y:2019:i:c:p:230-250. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jedc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.