IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/halshs-02053429.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

'Whatever it Takes' to Change Belief: Evidence from Twitter

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Stiefel

    (UZH - Universität Zürich [Zürich] = University of Zurich)

  • Rémi Vivès

    (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

The sovereign debt literature emphasizes the possibility of avoiding a self-fulfilling default crisis if markets anticipate the central bank to act as lender of last resort. This paper investigates the extent to which changes in belief about an intervention of the European Central Bank (ECB) explain the sudden reduction of government bond spreads for the distressed countries in summer 2012. We study Twitter data and extract belief using machine learning techniques. We find evidence of strong increases in the perceived likelihood of ECB intervention and show that those increases explain subsequent decreases in the bond spreads of the distressed countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Stiefel & Rémi Vivès, 2019. "'Whatever it Takes' to Change Belief: Evidence from Twitter," Working Papers halshs-02053429, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02053429
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02053429v2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02053429v2/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roch, Francisco & Uhlig, Harald, 2018. "The dynamics of sovereign debt crises and bailouts," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 1-13.
    2. 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.
    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. Annette Meinusch & Peter Tillmann, 2017. "Quantitative Easing and Tapering Uncertainty: Evidence from Twitter," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 13(4), pages 227-258, December.
    5. Urszula Szczerbowicz, 2015. "The ECB Unconventional Monetary Policies: Have They Lowered Market Borrowing Costs for Banks and Governments?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 11(4), pages 91-127, December.
    6. Giancarlo Corsetti & Luca Dedola, 2016. "The Mystery of the Printing Press: Monetary Policy and Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(6), pages 1329-1371.
    7. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Stefan Nagel & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2018. "ECB Policies Involving Government Bond Purchases: Impact and Channels [The “greatest” carry trade ever? Understanding eurozone bank risks]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(1), pages 1-44.
    8. Paul De Grauwe & Yuemei Ji, 2012. "Mispricing of Sovereign Risk and Macroeconomic Stability in the Eurozone," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(6), pages 866-880, November.
    9. Harold L. Cole & Timothy J. Kehoe, 1996. "A self-fulfilling model of Mexico's 1994-95 debt crisis," Staff Report 210, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. Luigi Bocola & Alessandro Dovis, 2019. "Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises: A Quantitative Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(12), pages 4343-4377, December.
    11. Scotti, Chiara, 2016. "Surprise and uncertainty indexes: Real-time aggregation of real-activity macro-surprises," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-19.
    12. Falagiarda, Matteo & Reitz, Stefan, 2015. "Announcements of ECB unconventional programs: Implications for the sovereign spreads of stressed euro area countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 276-295.
    13. Cole, Harold L. & Kehoe, Timothy J., 1996. "A self-fulfilling model of Mexico's 1994-1995 debt crisis," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-4), pages 309-330, November.
    14. Ralf Fendel & Frederik Neugebauer, 2018. "Country-Specific Euro Area Government Bond Yield Reactions to ECB’s Non-Standard Monetary Policy Announcements," WHU Working Paper Series - Economics Group 18-02, WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.
    15. Vahid Gholampour & Eric van Wincoop, 2017. "What can we Learn from Euro-Dollar Tweets?," NBER Working Papers 23293, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Ambler, Steve & Rumler, Fabio, 2019. "The effectiveness of unconventional monetary policy announcements in the euro area: An event and econometric study," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 48-61.
    17. Giancarlo Corsetti & Luca Dedola, 2012. "The "Mystery of the Printing Press" Monetary Policy and Self-fulfilling Debt Crises," Discussion Papers 1424, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM), revised Aug 2014.
    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. Ehrmann, Michael & Wabitsch, Alena, 2022. "Central bank communication with non-experts – A road to nowhere?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 69-85.

    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. Michael Stiefel & Rémi Vivès, 2022. "‘Whatever it takes’ to change belief: evidence from Twitter," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 158(3), pages 715-747, August.
    2. Javier Bianchi & Jorge Mondragon, 2022. "Monetary Independence and Rollover Crises," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(1), pages 435-491.
    3. Occhino, Filippo, 2017. "The 2012 eurozone crisis and the ECB’s OMT program: A debt-overhang banking and sovereign crisis interpretation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 337-363.
    4. Stangebye, Zachary R., 2020. "Beliefs and long-maturity sovereign debt," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    5. Corsetti, G. & Erce, A. & Uy, T., 2018. "Debt Sustainability and the Terms of Official Support," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1864, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    6. 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.
    7. Roch, Francisco & Uhlig, Harald, 2018. "The dynamics of sovereign debt crises and bailouts," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 1-13.
    8. Niels Gilbert, 2019. "Euro area sovereign risk spillovers before and after the ECB's OMT announcement," DNB Working Papers 636, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    9. Christophe Blot & Paul Hubert & Jérôme Creel & Caroline Bozou, 2023. "The conditionality of monetary policy instruments," Working Papers hal-04159848, HAL.
    10. Hartmann, Philipp & Smets, Frank, 2018. "The first twenty years of the European Central Bank: monetary policy," Working Paper Series 2219, European Central Bank.
    11. Joao Ayres & Gaston Navarro & Juan Pablo Nicolini & Pedro Teles, 2019. "Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises with Long Stagnations," Working Papers 757, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    12. Philipp Hartman & Frank Smets, 2018. "The European Central Bank’s Monetary Policy during Its First 20 Years," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 49(2 (Fall)), pages 1-146.
    13. Corsetti, Giancarlo & Maeng, Seung Hyun, 2020. "Debt Crises, Fast and Slow," CEPR Discussion Papers 14868, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Corradin, Stefano & Schwaab, Bernd, 2023. "Euro area sovereign bond risk premia before and during the Covid-19 pandemic," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    15. Christophe Blot & Caroline Bozou & Jérôme Creel & Paul Hubert, 2022. "The Conditional Path of Central Bank Asset Purchases," Working papers 885, Banque de France.
    16. Marco Fruzzetti & Giulio Gariano & Gerardo Palazzo & Antonio Scalia, 2021. "From SMP to PEPP: a further look at the risk endogeneity of the Central Bank," Mercati, infrastrutture, sistemi di pagamento (Markets, Infrastructures, Payment Systems) 11, Bank of Italy, Directorate General for Markets and Payment System.
    17. Giancarlo Corsetti, 2023. "Debt crises, fast and slow Giancarlo," RSCAS Working Papers 2023/15, European University Institute.
    18. Daragh Clancy & Peter G. Dunne & Pasquale Filiani, 2019. "Liquidity and tail-risk interdependencies in the euro area sovereign bond market," Working Papers 41, European Stability Mechanism.
    19. Giovanni Callegari & Ramon Marimon & Adrien Wicht & Luca Zavalloni, 2023. "On a Lender of Last Resort with a Central Bank and a Stability Fund," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 50, pages 106-130, October.
    20. Zaghini, Andrea, 2019. "The CSPP at work: Yield heterogeneity and the portfolio rebalancing channel," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 282-297.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    self-fulfilling default crisis; unconventional monetary policy; Twitter data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems

    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:hal:wpaper:halshs-02053429. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.