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It's not always about the money, sometimes it's about sending a message: Evidence of Informational Content in Monetary Policy Announcements

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  • Yong Cai
  • Santiago Camara
  • Nicholas Capel

Abstract

This paper introduces a transparent framework to identify the informational content of FOMC announcements. We do so by modelling the expectations of the FOMC and private sector agents using state of the art computational linguistic tools on both FOMC statements and New York Times articles. We identify the informational content of FOMC announcements as the projection of high frequency movements in financial assets onto differences in expectations. Our recovered series is intuitively reasonable and shows that information disclosure has a significant impact on the yields of short-term government bonds.

Suggested Citation

  • Yong Cai & Santiago Camara & Nicholas Capel, 2021. "It's not always about the money, sometimes it's about sending a message: Evidence of Informational Content in Monetary Policy Announcements," Papers 2111.06365, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2111.06365
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
    2. David O. Lucca & Francesco Trebbi, 2009. "Measuring Central Bank Communication: An Automated Approach with Application to FOMC Statements," NBER Working Papers 15367, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2018. "High-Frequency Identification of Monetary Non-Neutrality: The Information Effect," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1283-1330.
    4. Ramey, V.A., 2016. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Their Propagation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 71-162, Elsevier.
    5. 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.
    6. Marek Jarociński & Peter Karadi, 2020. "Deconstructing Monetary Policy Surprises—The Role of Information Shocks," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 1-43, April.
    7. Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2021. "Economic Predictions With Big Data: The Illusion of Sparsity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(5), pages 2409-2437, September.
    8. Mark Gertler & Peter Karadi, 2015. "Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 44-76, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Marco Pinchetti & Andrzej Szczepaniak, 2024. "Global Spillovers of the Fed Information Effect," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 72(2), pages 773-819, June.
    2. Taejin Park & Fernando Perez-Cruz & Hyun Song Shin, 2025. "Mapping the space of central bankers' ideas," BIS Working Papers 1299, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Ahrens, Maximilian & Erdemlioglu, Deniz & McMahon, Michael & Neely, Christopher J. & Yang, Xiye, 2025. "Mind your language: Market responses to central bank speeches," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 249(PC).
    4. Santiago Camara, 2021. "Spillovers of US Interest Rates: Monetary Policy & Information Effects," Papers 2111.08631, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2023.

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