Deciphering Federal Reserve Communication via Text Analysis of Alternative FOMC Statements

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Doh, Taeyoung; Song, Dongho; Yang, Shu-Kuei
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Kansas City; Johns Hopkins University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20220312
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: monetary-policy; interest-rates; returns

摘要

We propose a text-based measure of monetary policy stance that models FOMC statements as convex combinations of dovish and hawkish alternatives, providing a tractable representation of the Committee's position along the policy spectrum. Leveraging staff-drafted alternative statements, we fine-tune a pretrained language model to capture both quantitative precision and semantic tone. Stance is defined as the product of tone and novelty, and decomposed into expected and surprise components using high-frequency financial data. Surprises arise from shifts in tone relative to expectations or from statement novelty. Our framework enables counterfactuals showing how alternative communication could have moved markets. (JEL D83, D84, E31, E32, E43, E52, E58)