中央银行沟通的一致性——来自中国人民银行的证据

The Consistency of Central Bank Communication:Evidence from the People's Bank of China

良好的沟通是央行实现预期管理的重要手段。本文结合Wordscores和潜在狄利克雷模型良好的沟通是央行实现预期管理的重要手段。本文结合Wordscores和潜在狄利克雷模型(Latent Dirichlet Allocation,LDA),对以“存款准备金率”为关键词爬取的新闻进行机器学习,研究中央银行沟通的一致性及其是否存在主题不对称。央行沟通的一致性包括外部一致性和内部一致性。其中,外部一致性指央行沟通和媒体新闻对货币政策预测和解读的一致性。研究结果表明,央行沟通与新闻在短期更为一致;货币政策立场转变时,央行更为“委婉”,媒体更为“直接”;媒体对金融市场关注度较高;紧缩政策前后,财经新闻较官方媒体对政策立场有更多不同的声音;央行沟通和媒体报道有助于稳定公众预期和提升货币政策效力,对于央行职责范围内的主题,两者的预测和解读都较准确。内部一致性则包括货币政策委员会的前瞻性沟通与实际政策决定的一致性、货币政策委员会不同成员沟通效果的一致性。结果表明,前瞻性沟通确实存在且存在不对称效应;在紧缩货币政策前,央行沟通更频繁,但立场较为模糊;前瞻性沟通与实际政策的相关性在短期更高;此外,行长的前瞻性沟通相较外部委员更频繁,且与政策声明更一致,说明不同成员的沟通效果存在差异。

Effective central bank communication is conducive to managing expectations.This paper combines Wordscores and Latent Dirichlet Allocation(LDA)to study the consistency of central bank communication and whether the consistency has thematic asymmetries.Consistency here includes internal consistency and external consistency.External consistency of central bank communication refers to the consistency between the central bank's official statements and media's predicting and interpreting monetary policies.This paper makes a heterogeneous distinction between the official media and financial media,and applies machine learning to online news obtained by crawling with the keywords of“deposit reserve ratio”.The results show that central bank communication and the media are more consistent in the short term.When the monetary policy stance changes,the central bank is more“tactful”while the media is more“direct”.The media pay more attention to the financial market.Before and after the monetary policy is tightened,financial media has more different voices on the policy stance than the official media.Central bank communication and media reports both can help stabilize public expectations and enhance the effectiveness of monetary policy.The forecasts and interpretations of topics within the scope of the central bank's responsibilities are more accurate.Internal consistency includes the consistency of forward-looking communication and actual policy decisions of the Monetary Policy Committee and the consistency of communication effects of Committee members.The results show that forward-looking communication does exist and is asymmetric.Before the monetary policy is tightened,the central bank would communicate more frequently,but with a vague position.The correlation between forward-looking communication and actual policies is higher in the short term.In addition,the governor's forward-looking communication is more frequent than that of external members and more consistent with the policy statement,which indicates that the communication effects of different members are different.