Abstract
This article examines whether the IMF sentiment conveyed by the Regional Economic Outlook (REO) provides new information capable of influencing government bond markets. To measure IMF sentiment, we use text mining techniques on an original dataset based on the qualitative content of the REO reports for 16 countries across three regions covered by the REO, Asia and Pacific, Europe, and Western Hemisphere, from 2005 to 2018. Our results suggest that the qualitative content of the REO reports has significant repercussions on bond yields, particularly in the Asia and Pacific region, and provides a positive signal in bond markets of countries participating in an IMF program in the Europe and Western Hemisphere regions. IMF sentiment towards the leading trade partner can also be an essential source of bond markets’ reactions. These findings are robust when controlling for IMF quantitative forecasts in the empirical procedure, accounting for an alternative sentiment measure and controlling for other potential determinants of bond yields. They thus shed new light on the importance of IMF communication for guiding and managing markets’ expectations.
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Notes
See the statement of G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/finance/fm103098.htm), and the memorandum on the Work Program on Strengthening the Archi-tecture of the International Monetary System, issued by the IMF Executive Directors of the G7 countries, to the IMF Director and Executive Board, October 30, 1998 (https://www.imf.org/external/np/g7/103098ed.htm).
The IMFC advises the IMF Board of Governors on the supervision and management of the international monetary and financial system, in particular during events that may disrupt the system.
Western Hemisphere: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Europe: France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Asia and Pacific: Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea.
Fig. 3 in Appendix 1 shows the geographical coverage of the REO reports.
The publication of the REO report starts at different dates, depending on the regions: in October 2004 for Sub-Saharan Africa, September 2005 for the Asia and Pacific and Middle East and Central Asia, April 2006 for the Western Hemisphere, and November 2007 for Europe.
GI words that are not relevant to IMF reports are excluded from the analysis by default.
The standardization consists, for each sentiment measure, in subtracting the sample period’s mean and dividing by the sample period’s standard deviation of the sentiment measure.
These changes might be explained by variations in the writing style due to turnover in the IMF’s writing teams.
Positive (negative) Z-scores indicate that the degree of optimism (pessimism) in the text is above (below) average.
We perfomed the Hausman test (Hausman, 1978) to check whether a fixed effects model is preferable to a random effects model. The test show a strong and significant heterogeneity amongst countries for most regressions. We thereby consider that a fixed-effect specification matches better the data generating process.
\(\sum \limits _{i=0}^h \left( r_{i,t+i} - r_{i,t-1}\right) = \left( r_{i,t+h} - r_{i,t+h-1}\right) +\cdots +\left( r_{i,t} - r_{i,t-1}\right) = r_{i,t+h} - r_{i,t-1}\).
Due to data availability, this analysis is not carried out for Turkey, Argentina, and Australia. Similarly, it is not possible to extend the analysis to the 20-year and 30-year government bond yields.
For the sake of brevity, the results are not reported in the paper but are available from the authors upon request.
Standby Agreement from 05/11/2005 to 05/10/2008.
5 Flexible Credit Lines from 05/06/2009 to 11/02/2017.
Standby Agreement approved on 20/06/2018.
8 Flexible Credit Lines from 17/04/2009 to 21/11/2021.
Specifically, euro area countries appear to have responded to the 3% limit imposed by the Stability and Growth Pact by offering optimistic forecasts when they are most in danger of breaching the limit.
The IMF is funded by a quota system where each country pays based on the size of its economy and its political importance in world trade and finance. More specifically, IMF quotas are distributed according to a four-pronged formula that considers a member country’s GDP, its economic openness, its economic variability and international reserves.
The Fed major announcements made during the time windows considered correspond to the following dates: (i) October 12th 2012, (ii) April 28th 2010, April 27th 2011, and (iii) April 25th 2012, May 1st 2013, April 30th 2014, respectively.
The ECB major announcements made during the time windows considered correspond to the following dates: (i) April 12th 2007, April 10th 2008, (ii) May 04th 2006, May 7th 2009 and (iii) May 2nd 2013.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Jean-Yves Gnabo, Gatien Bon, two anonymous referees as well as participants of the 2021 European Public Choice Society’s annual meeting and the 14th Annual Conference on The Political Economy of International Organization for constructive comments and suggestions.
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Appendices
Appendix 1
Geographical coverage of the REO reports
Appendix 2
See Tables 6, 7 and Figs. 4, 5, 6
IMF Sentiment towards each country, Asia and Pacific. Note: The figures show the evolution of Z-score for each sentiment index—\(t_{i,t}\) (solid line), \(t_{i,t}^{alt}\) (dotted line)—and for each selected country within the Asia and Pacific region
IMF Sentiment towards each country, Europe. Note: The figures show the evolution of Z-score for each sentiment index—\(t_{i,t}\) (solid line), \(t_{i,t}^{alt}\) (dotted line)—and for each selected country within the Europe region
IMF Sentiment towards each country, Western Hemisphere. Note: The figures show the evolution of Z-score for each sentiment index—\(t_{i,t}\) (solid line), \(t_{i,t}^{alt}\) (dotted line)—and for each selected country within the Western Hemisphere region
Appendix 3
See Tables 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12.
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Bennani, H., Couharde, C. & Wallois, Y. The effect of IMF communication on government bond markets: insights from sentiment analysis. Rev World Econ (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10290-023-00509-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10290-023-00509-1