Ideology and Monetary Policy: The Role of Political Parties’ Stances in the ECB's Parliamentary Hearings
72 Pages Posted: 15 Mar 2022
Date Written: March, 2022
Abstract
We investigate whether ideology drives the sentiments of parliamentarians when they speak to the central bank they hold accountable. To this end, we collect textual data on the quarterly hearings of the ECB President before the European Parliament from 1999 to 2019. We apply sentiment analysis to more than 1,900 speeches of individual Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from 128 parties. We find robust evidence that MEPs’ sentiments toward the ECB are correlated with the ideological stance predominantly on a pro-/anti-European dimension rather than on a left-right dimension.
Keywords: Central Bank Accountability, Central Bank Independence, Party Ideology, Sentiment Analysis
JEL Classification: E02, E52, E58
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation