Let's speak more? How the ECB responds to public contestation

Figures & data

Figure 1. Topics in executive board members’ speeches, 2001–2017. Notes: Frequency indicates the probability of observing each word in the vocabulary of a given topic. Exclusivity identifies words associated with a topic that are unlikely to appear among the top words of another topic. Words’ labels are weighted by joint frequency and exclusivity. Words are presented in their stemmed form.

Figure 2. Topic prevalence over time in executive board members’ speeches, 2001–2017. Notes: Topics are ordered based on their average prevalence. Red horizontal lines refer to the average topic prevalence over the period of analysis (2001–2017). 95 percent confidence intervals are reported.

Table 1. Determinants of issue diversity and core salience in ECB speeches.

Dependent variable	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
	Issue diversity		Core salience
Trust	−0.031*	−0.029**	0.003**
	(0.015)	(0.010)	(0.001)
Type of Audience
General		Baseline
Political Audience	0.461*	0.462*	−0.002
	(0.182)	(0.183)	(0.031)
Press Audience	0.054	0.054	−0.005
	(0.151)	(0.151)	(0.020)
Speaker
EB member		Baseline
President	−0.377*	−0.377*	0.211***
	(0.153)	(0.153)	(0.051)
Time to end mandate	−0.010^+	−0.010*	−0.001
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.001)
Economic Growth (GDP)	−0.061^+	−0.059	0.013***
	(0.036)	(0.037)	(0.003)
Inflation	0.065	0.067	−0.034***
	(0.081)	(0.079)	(0.09)
Unemployment	−0.019	_	_
	(0.068)
Uncertainty	−0.002**	−0.002**	−0.0000
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.0000)
Time	−0.023	−0.021	0.005
	(0.050)	(0.046)	(0.008)
Liabilities	0.043	0.050	0.010
	(0.156)	0.165	0.025
ECB Mandate	−0.073	−0.074	−0.058
	(0.185)	(0.187)	(0.038)
Constant	5.856***	5.617***	0.347***
	(1.059)	(0.403)	(0.085)
SD (speaker)	0.372***	0.372***	0.094***
	(0.081)	(0.081)	(0.019)
SD (residual)	2.003***	2.003***	0.284***
	(0.090)	(0.090)	(0.023)
N	1427	1427	1427
N speaker	17	17	17
AIC	6082.1	6080.2	525.8
BIC	6161.1	6153.8	599.5

Notes: Robust standard errors are reported in parentheses. Significance:⁺p < 0.1, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Figure 3. Topic prevalence in ECB communication and public trust in the ECB. Notes: Topics are ordered based on their average prevalence. Red horizontal lines refer to the average topic prevalence over the period of analysis (2001–2017). 95 percent confidence intervals are reported.