This paper introduces natural language processing into the study of central banking. It studies the evolution of the ECB’s communication through time, considering its three subsequent presidents (W. Duisenberg, J. C. Trichet and M. Draghi) and the pre- and post-2008 financial crisis era. It helps understand the history of the ECB since its inception. From a methodological standpoint, we study the evolution of the ECB’s speeches. The speech analysis is based on text classification and sentiment/polarity analyses. For that purpose, we have built a unique dataset of the ECB’s speeches. We have coded algorithms to run the text analysis through time. They help us capture the evolution in the ECB’s understanding of the actual economic situation and also measure — for instance — the stress level at the ECB through a polarity analysis through time.

中文翻译：

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欧洲央行行长的讲话：一项 NLP 研究

本文将自然语言处理引入中央银行的研究。它研究了欧洲央行的沟通随时间的演变，考虑了其随后的三位行长（W. Duisenberg、JC Trichet 和 M. Draghi）以及 2008 年之前和之后的金融危机时代。它有助于了解欧洲央行自成立以来的历史。从方法论的角度来看，我们研究了欧洲央行讲话的演变。语音分析基于文本分类和情感/极性分析。为此，我们建立了欧洲央行讲话的独特数据集。我们已经编写了算法来运行文本分析。它们帮助我们捕捉欧洲央行对实际经济形势理解的演变，并通过对时间的极性分析来衡量——例如——欧洲央行的压力水平。