Does clarity make central banks more engaging? Lessons from ECB communications

Federico Maria Ferrara and Siria Angino

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Despite increasing communication efforts, it may be difficult for central banks to engage the public, as their language is often too difficult to understand for most citizens. Focusing on the case of the European Central Bank (ECB), we hypothesise that greater communication clarity is conducive to stronger engagement. We rely on readability metrics to measure the clarity of ECB communications. We show that communication clarity is a significant and robust predictor of the media engagement generated by the ECB with its speeches, press conferences and tweets. Our findings are validated by a placebo test and have significant policy implications for central bank communication.

Keywords: Central Bank communication; clarity; ECB; engagement; media; readability metrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F3 G3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2022-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published in European Journal of Political Economy, 1, September, 2022, 74. ISSN: 0176-2680

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Journal Article: Does clarity make central banks more engaging? Lessons from ECB communications (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:112968

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