A literature review on central bank communication

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to review the economic literature on central bank communication to address the questions of how economists account for the effects of speech acts and whether and to what extent discourse analysis is applied in their studies. Moreover, whether there may be room for more linguistic approaches to analyse central bank communication is investigated. Design/methodology/approach – A range of recently published (2004-2013) works in the area of central bank communication are critically scrutinized to highlight the current thinking in this area. The sources are organised into different sections, namely, communication in monetary policy theory; impacts of speech acts; optimizing central bank communication; and linguistic analysis of central bank communication. Findings – The current literature is developing a coherent argument that central bank communication is an important part of monetary policy and that speech acts by the central bank do have impacts at the macroeconomic level. Linguistic analysis does have the potential to contribute to this literature, as little attention has been paid to the content of the speech acts. Originality/value – This paper fulfils the need for an up-to-date review of the developing literature on central bank communication. This paper also provides support for linguistic analysis in this area.

Mirror, mirror? An evaluation of identical twin mirroring in tooth crown morphology

“…In fact, chorionicity was reported for only one of the five pairs identified as potential MITs in our sample. The fact that this pair (MIT 2) was dichorionic (Toby Hughes, personal communication) suggests the cotwins are not “true” mirrors and their opposing asymmetry has no embryological foundation related to the twinning event (Figure 3).…”

“…The latter was calculated as difference in birthweight divided by weight of the larger twin following Hack et al (2009). The gray dashed lines indicate the average raw birthweight discordance for monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) participants of the University of Adelaide Twin Study for whom data are digitally curated, including all of Cohort 1 and a portion of Cohort 2 (Toby Hughes, personal communication). The red dashed lines indicate Hack et al's (2009) reported median relative birthweight discordance for monochorionic monoamniotic twin pairs (MA) and the commonly accepted cut‐off for “severe” percent discordance (SD).…”

Rich variety of DA approaches applied in social media research: A systematic scoping review

“…Thematic categorisation of the reviewed papers and descriptive bibliometric analysis seem to be common, but not mandatory features of these reviews. Moreover, as they are rather interested in the findings of a specific field, some papers do not exclusively focus on DA (Hughes and Kesting, 2014;Jungherr, 2016;Randour et al, 2020). While those scholarly reviews that especially emphasise the importance of DA in their own field, are mostly curious in the application of critical discourse analysis (or Critical Discourse Studies) (Mullet, 2018;Qian et al, 2018;Rogers and Schaenen, 2014;Rogers et al, 2005).…”

Asset market response to monetary policy news from SNB press releases

“…There is now a vast amount of empirical evidence that central bank communication significantly affects asset prices on various markets (for an overview, see Blinder et al 2008). However, Hughes and Kesting (2014) suggest that until now little attention has been paid to the content of speech, meaning that there is potential for linguistic approaches to contribute to the discussion of optimal central bank communication. Understanding which aspects of monetary policy news influence financial market expectations and asset prices is important for an optimal communication design.…”