Analysing monetary policy statements of the Reserve Bank of India

Aakriti Mathur and Rajeswari Sengupta

Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers from Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India

Abstract: In this paper we quantitatively analyse monetary policy statements of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from 1998 to 2017, across the regimes of five governors. We first ask whether the content and focus of the statements have changed with the adoption of inflation-targeting as a framework for conducting monetary policy. Next, we study the influence of various aspects of monetary policy communication on structural complexity that capture governor-specific trends in communication. We find that while RBI's monetary policy communication is linguistically complex on average, the length of monetary policy statements has gone down and readability has improved significantly in the recent years. We also find that there has been a persistent semantic shift in RBI's monetary policy communication since the adoption of inflation-targeting. Finally, using a simple regression model we find that lengthier and less readable statements are linked to both higher trading volumes and higher returns volatility in the equity markets, though the effects are not persistent.

Keywords: Monetary policy; central bank communication; linguistic complexity; financial markets; textual analysis; natural language processing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E52 E58 G12 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2019-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-ifn, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Working Paper: Analysing monetary policy statements of the Reserve Bank of India (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2019-012

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