IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfel/00125.html

What's in the News? A New Economic Indicator

Author

Abstract

Newspaper articles and editorials about the economy do more than just report on official data releases. They also often convey how the journalist and those interviewed feel about the economy. Researchers have recently developed ways to extract data on sentiment from news articles using text analysis and machine learning techniques. These measures of news sentiment track current economic conditions quite well. In fact, they often do a better job than standard consumer sentiment surveys at forecasting future economic conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Hale Shapiro & Daniel J. Wilson, 2017. "What's in the News? A New Economic Indicator," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:00125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2017-10.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sylvain Leduc & Zheng Liu, 2013. "Uncertainty and the slow labor market recovery," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue july22.
    2. Jason Bram & Sydney C. Ludvigson, 1998. "Does consumer confidence forecast household expenditure? a sentiment index horse race," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 4(Jun), pages 59-78.
    3. Carroll, Christopher D & Fuhrer, Jeffrey C & Wilcox, David W, 1994. "Does Consumer Sentiment Forecast Household Spending? If So, Why?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1397-1408, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Erik Kole & Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens & Bas Vringer, 2019. "Cognitive Biases and Consumer Sentiment," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-031/I, Tinbergen Institute, revised 21 Mar 2023.
    2. Thomas A. Garrett, 2002. "Aggregated vs. disaggregated data in regression analysis: implications for inference," Working Papers 2002-024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    3. Aneta Maria Kłopocka, 2017. "Does Consumer Confidence Forecast Household Saving and Borrowing Behavior? Evidence for Poland," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(2), pages 693-717, September.
    4. Simeon Vosen & Torsten Schmidt, 2011. "Forecasting private consumption: survey‐based indicators vs. Google trends," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 565-578, September.
    5. Gikas Hardouvelis & Dimitrios Thomakos, 2007. "Consumer Confidence and Elections," Working Papers 0003, University of Peloponnese, Department of Economics.
    6. E. Philip Howrey, 2001. "The Predictive Power of the Index of Consumer Sentiment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 32(1), pages 175-216.
    7. Aneta M. Klopocka & Rumiana Gorska, 2021. "Forecasting Household Saving Rate with Consumer Confidence Indicator and its Components: Panel Data Analysis of 14 European Countries," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(3 - Part ), pages 874-898.
    8. Kajal Lahiri & Yongchen Zhao, 2016. "Determinants of Consumer Sentiment Over Business Cycles: Evidence from the US Surveys of Consumers," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 12(2), pages 187-215, December.
    9. Neszveda, Gábor & Csillag, Balázs, 2020. "A gazdasági várakozások hatása a tőzsdei momentumstratégiára [The impact of economic expectations on the momentum trading strategy]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(11), pages 1093-1111.
    10. Brigitte Desroches & Marc‐André Gosselin, 2004. "Evaluating Threshold Effects in Consumer Sentiment," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(4), pages 942-952, April.
    11. Joscha Beckmann & Ansgar Belke & Michael Kühl, 2012. "The cross-country importance of global sentiments—evidence for smaller EU countries," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 245-264, September.
    12. Simeon Vosen & Torsten Schmidt, 2012. "A monthly consumption indicator for Germany based on Internet search query data," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(7), pages 683-687, May.
    13. repec:diw:diwwpp:dp1066 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. César Carrera & Miguel Puch, 2019. "Consumption dynamics and the expectation channel in a Small Open Economy," Working Papers 144, Peruvian Economic Association.
    15. Brigitte Desroches & Marc-André Gosselin, 2002. "The Usefulness of Consumer Confidence Indexes in the United States," Staff Working Papers 02-22, Bank of Canada.
    16. Chen, Zhongdong & Daves, Phillip R., 2018. "The January sentiment effect in the U.S. stock market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 94-104.
    17. Joscha Beckmann & Ansgar Belke & Michael Kühl, 2011. "Global Integration of Central and Eastern European Financial Markets—The Role of Economic Sentiments," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 137-157, February.
    18. Croushore, Dean, 2005. "Do consumer-confidence indexes help forecast consumer spending in real time?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 435-450, December.
    19. Memon, Husna & Rubin, Amir, 2026. "Consumer sentiment inequality, relative performance of firms, and the market," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    20. Ahmet Yağmur Ersoy & Metin Saygılı & Mustafa İlteriş Yılmaz & Mustafa Emre Uslu & İhsan Hakan Selvi, 2022. "Consumer Sentiment in Turkey, from Closure to the New Normal," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-24, July.
    21. Konstantinou, Panagiotis & Tagkalakis, Athanasios, 2011. "Boosting confidence: Is there a role for fiscal policy?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 1629-1641, July.

    More about this item

    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:fip:fedfel:00125. 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: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.html .

    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.