IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/17-12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

FOMC communication and interest rate sensitivity to news

Author

Abstract

In this paper, I examine whether communications by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) play a role in determining the types of macroeconomic news that financial markets pay attention to. To do so, I construct novel measures of the intensity with which FOMC statements and meeting minutes discussed labor relative to other topics. I find that these labor topic intensity measures are related to the amount by which interest rates? response to labor-related news exceeds their response to all other news. This relationship is especially strong for interest rates of longer maturities and is also present for short-term interest rate expectations over various horizons.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny Tang, 2017. "FOMC communication and interest rate sensitivity to news," Working Papers 17-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:17-12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2017/fomc-communication-and-interest-rate-sensitivity-to-news.aspx
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/2017/wp1712.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kuttner, Kenneth N., 2001. "Monetary policy surprises and interest rates: Evidence from the Fed funds futures market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 523-544, June.
    2. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher & Jakob De Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2008. "Central Bank Communication and Monetary Policy: A Survey of Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(4), pages 910-945, December.
    3. Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher, 2005. "Equal Size, Equal Role? Interest Rate Interdependence Between the Euro Area and the United States," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(506), pages 928-948, October.
    4. 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.
    5. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Michael Woodford, 2003. "The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 139-235.
    6. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher & Jakob De Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2008. "Central Bank Communication and Monetary Policy: A Survey of Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(4), pages 910-945, December.
    7. Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Shapiro, Matthew D., 2007. "Monetary policy when potential output is uncertain: Understanding the growth gamble of the 1990s," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1132-1162, May.
    8. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2010. "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 35-71, January.
    9. repec:pri:cepsud:161blinder is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Michael Woodford, 2012. "Methods of policy accommodation at the interest-rate lower bound," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 185-288.
    11. Faust, Jon & Rogers, John H. & Wang, Shing-Yi B. & Wright, Jonathan H., 2007. "The high-frequency response of exchange rates and interest rates to macroeconomic announcements," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1051-1068, May.
    12. Eric T. Swanson & John C. Williams, 2014. "Measuring the Effect of the Zero Lower Bound on Medium- and Longer-Term Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3154-3185, October.
    13. Ben S. Bernanke & Vincent R. Reinhart & Brian P. Sack, 2004. "Monetary Policy Alternatives at the Zero Bound: An Empirical Assessment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 35(2), pages 1-100.
    14. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    15. Paul C. Tetlock, 2007. "Giving Content to Investor Sentiment: The Role of Media in the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1139-1168, June.
    16. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:3:p:1259-1294 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Luis Felipe Gutiérrez & Neda Tavakoli & Sima Siami-Namini & Akbar Siami Namin, 2022. "Similarity analysis of federal reserve statements using document embeddings: the Great Recession vs. COVID-19," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(7), pages 1-28, July.
    2. Ricardo Nunes & Ali Ozdagli & Jenny Tang, 2022. "Interest Rate Surprises: A Tale of Two Shocks," Working Papers 2213, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    3. Dongho Song & Jenny Tang, 2023. "News-Driven Uncertainty Fluctuations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(3), pages 968-982, July.
    4. Peter Tillmann, 2020. "Macroeconomic Surprises and the Demand for Information about Monetary Policy," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202007, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    5. Tillmann, Peter, 2020. "Macroeconomic Surprises and the Demand for Information about Monetary Policy," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224545, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    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. 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.
    2. Fischer, Andreas M. & Ranaldo, Angelo, 2011. "Does FOMC news increase global FX trading?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 2965-2973, November.
    3. Apergis, Nicholas, 2015. "The role of FOMC minutes for US asset prices before and after the 2008 crisis: Evidence from GARCH volatility modeling," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 100-107.
    4. Masahiko Shibamoto, 2016. "Empirical Assessment of the Impact of Monetary Policy Communication on the Financial Market," Discussion Paper Series DP2016-19, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    5. Kurt G. Lunsford, 2020. "Policy Language and Information Effects in the Early Days of Federal Reserve Forward Guidance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2899-2934, September.
    6. Kurt Graden Lunsford, 2018. "Understanding the Aspects of Federal Reserve Forward Guidance," Working Papers (Old Series) 1815, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    7. Carlo Rosa, 2012. "How "unconventional" are large-scale asset purchases? The impact of monetary policy on asset prices," Staff Reports 560, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    8. Bennani, Hamza, 2018. "Media coverage and ECB policy-making: Evidence from an augmented Taylor rule," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 26-38.
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3mgbd73vkp9f9oje7utooe7vpg is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Gunda‐Alexandra Detmers & Ozer Karagedikli & Richhild Moessner, 2021. "Quantitative or Qualitative Forward Guidance: Does it Matter?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 97(319), pages 491-503, December.
    11. Paul Hubert & Fabien Labondance, 2016. "The Effect of ECB Forward Guidance on Policy Expectations," Working Papers hal-01394821, HAL.
    12. Paul Hubert & Fabien Labondance, 2019. "Central bank tone and the dispersion of views within monetary policy committees," Working Papers hal-03403256, HAL.
    13. Domenico Lombardi & Pierre L. Siklos & Samantha St. Amand, 2019. "Government Bond Yields At The Effective Lower Bound: International Evidence," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 37(1), pages 102-120, January.
    14. Chen, Zhengyang, 2019. "The Long-term Rate and Interest Rate Volatility in Monetary Policy Transmission," EconStor Preprints 204579, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    15. Aeimit Lakdawala, 2019. "Decomposing the effects of monetary policy using an external instruments SVAR," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(6), pages 934-950, September.
    16. Andrade, Philippe & Ferroni, Filippo, 2021. "Delphic and odyssean monetary policy shocks: Evidence from the euro area," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 816-832.
    17. Hubert, Paul & Labondance, Fabien, 2021. "The signaling effects of central bank tone," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7v8fvu0bf08jcoi4epn8cutjm8 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Kurov, Alexander & Stan, Raluca, 2018. "Monetary policy uncertainty and the market reaction to macroeconomic news," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 127-142.
    20. Cavaca, Igor Bastos & Meurer, Roberto, 2024. "The asymmetry and uncertainty effects on the response of the yield curve to Brazilian monetary policy," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA), pages 831-844.
    21. Dick van Dijk & Robin L. Lumsdaine & Michel van der Wel, 2014. "Market Set-Up in Advance of Federal Reserve Policy Decisions," NBER Working Papers 19814, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/2g6qj1trtu8q2r79ee4jp49krd is not listed on IDEAS
    23. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/7v8fvu0bf08jcoi4epn8cutjm8 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Alexander Jung & Patrick Kuehl, 2021. "Can central bank communication help to stabilise inflation expectations?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(3), pages 298-321, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Federal Reserve; FOMC; central bank communications; interest rates;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • 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
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fedbwp:17-12. 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 Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.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.