Soft information and economic activity: Evidence from the Beige Book

This study employs text-analysis software to analyze the contents of the Federal Reserve Beige Book summary of national economic and business conditions, with a particular focus on the predictive content of the text. We show that the Beige Book language is a good predictor of economic turning points...

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Main Authors: Sadique, Shibley, In, F., Veeraraghavan, M., Wachtel, P.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Elsevier 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33060
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author Sadique, Shibley
In, F.
Veeraraghavan, M.
Wachtel, P.
author_facet Sadique, Shibley
In, F.
Veeraraghavan, M.
Wachtel, P.
author_sort Sadique, Shibley
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description This study employs text-analysis software to analyze the contents of the Federal Reserve Beige Book summary of national economic and business conditions, with a particular focus on the predictive content of the text. We show that the Beige Book language is a good predictor of economic turning points as it often provides an early indication of future economic activities. During economic upswings, positive tone becomes more prominent and negative tone becomes less prominent. In addition, this study is the first to document that Beige Book tone affects stock market volatility and trading volume.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T08:30:55Z
format Journal Article
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T08:30:55Z
publishDate 2013
publisher Elsevier
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-330602017-09-13T15:28:50Z Soft information and economic activity: Evidence from the Beige Book Sadique, Shibley In, F. Veeraraghavan, M. Wachtel, P. general inquirer textual analysis forecasting economic fluctuations beige book This study employs text-analysis software to analyze the contents of the Federal Reserve Beige Book summary of national economic and business conditions, with a particular focus on the predictive content of the text. We show that the Beige Book language is a good predictor of economic turning points as it often provides an early indication of future economic activities. During economic upswings, positive tone becomes more prominent and negative tone becomes less prominent. In addition, this study is the first to document that Beige Book tone affects stock market volatility and trading volume. 2013 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33060 10.1016/j.jmacro.2013.01.004 Elsevier restricted
spellingShingle general inquirer
textual analysis
forecasting
economic fluctuations
beige book
Sadique, Shibley
In, F.
Veeraraghavan, M.
Wachtel, P.
Soft information and economic activity: Evidence from the Beige Book
title Soft information and economic activity: Evidence from the Beige Book
title_full Soft information and economic activity: Evidence from the Beige Book
title_fullStr Soft information and economic activity: Evidence from the Beige Book
title_full_unstemmed Soft information and economic activity: Evidence from the Beige Book
title_short Soft information and economic activity: Evidence from the Beige Book
title_sort soft information and economic activity: evidence from the beige book
topic general inquirer
textual analysis
forecasting
economic fluctuations
beige book
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33060