IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfel/00125.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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. 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.
    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. Sylvain Leduc & Zheng Liu, 2013. "Uncertainty and the slow labor market recovery," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue july22.
    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. Hatice Gökçe Karasoy Can & Çağlar Yüncüler, 2018. "The Explanatory Power and the Forecast Performance of Consumer Confidence Indices for Private Consumption Growth in Turkey," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(9), pages 2136-2152, July.
    2. Philip Lowe & Luci Ellis, 1997. "The Smoothing of Official Interest Rates," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Philip Lowe (ed.),Monetary Policy and Inflation Targeting, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    3. Vosen, Simeon & Schmidt, Torsten, 2012. "A monthly consumption indicator for Germany based on Internet search query data," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 19(7), pages 683-687.
    4. 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.
    5. Osterloh, Steffen, 2018. "How do politics affect economic sentiment? The effects of uncertainty and policy preferences," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181614, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2009_033 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. 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.
    8. Thomas A. Garrett, 2002. "Aggregated vs. disaggregated data in regression analysis: implications for inference," Working Papers 2002-024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    9. 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.
    10. Patrick M. Crowley & Tony Schildt, 2012. "An Analysis of the Embedded Frequency Content of Macroeconomic Indicators and their Counterparts using the Hilbert-Huang Transform," OECD Journal: Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2012(1), pages 1-31.
    11. Gikas A. Hardouvelis & Dimitrios D. Thomakos, 2007. "Consumer Confidence and Elections," Working Paper series 42_07, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    12. 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.
    13. Thomas A. Garrett & Ruben Hernandez-Murillo & Michael T. Owyang, 2005. "Does consumer sentiment predict regional consumption?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 87(Mar), pages 123-135.
    14. Vincenzo Merella & Stephen E. Satchell, 2014. "Technology Shocks and Asset Pricing: The Role of Consumer Confidence," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 352, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    15. 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.
    16. repec:zbw:rwirep:0174 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Juhro, Solikin M. & Iyke, Bernard Njindan, 2020. "Consumer confidence and consumption expenditure in Indonesia," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 367-377.
    18. 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.
    19. 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.
    20. Shapiro, Adam Hale & Sudhof, Moritz & Wilson, Daniel J., 2022. "Measuring news sentiment," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 221-243.
    21. 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.
    22. Christiansen, Charlotte & Eriksen, Jonas Nygaard & Møller, Stig Vinther, 2014. "Forecasting US recessions: The role of sentiment," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 459-468.

    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.