ECB and FED governors' speeches : a topic modeling analysis (2007-2019)

In the last years of the twentieth century central banks started strengthening their communication strategy, making it easier to analyze the evolution of central banks' functions and role over time and space. In this chapter we employ a topic modeling approach to investigate the differences in the topics contained in European Central Bank (ECB) and Federal Reserve (FED) Governors' speeches over the time period 2007-2019. We find that both ECB and FED speeches are strongly related to monetary policy, even if the largest number of FED Governors' speeches is related to the promotion of financial stability, especially with respect to the time period 2008–2010. Additionally, in the United States, the topic of consumer protection is also detected.