European Central Bank׳s monetary policy decisions: A dataset of two decades of press conferences

What is it about?

The dataset gathers all press conferences in text form made by the first three Presidents of the European Central Bank since its inception in 1998. Press conferences are composed of two elements: (1) introductory statements and (2) questions and answers (Q&A) from journalists. They serve as the main communication vehicle about the monetary policy decision of the ECB׳s Governing Council. From 1998 to 2016, a total of 205 press conferences have been delivered. The dataset is structured into two main sections: (1) 205 introductory statement of the Presidents of the ECB explaining the monetary policy of the Institution and (2) 205 answers provided by the Presidents to the journalists, hence a total of 410 statements (914,499 words or 3050 pages) about the monetary policy and its context, in text form.

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Photo by Miguel Henriques on Unsplash

Photo by Miguel Henriques on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The dataset offers a unique access to almost 20 years of institutional communication. The dataset can be used at once to analyze the speeches of the introductory statements of the ECB as well as the answers provided by the Presidents to the journalists during the Q&A segment. The dataset can be used to analyze structured as well as unstructured data. The dataset has been precoded: on top of a corpus of text machine-readable (CSV file), the number of words, and questions asked by intervention have been recorded.