Exploring the informativeness and drivers of tone during committee meetings: The case of the Federal Reserve

This paper examines the informativeness and drivers of the tone used by FOMC members to gain insights into the decision-making process of the FOMC. We use a bag-of-words approach to measure the tone of transcripts at the speaker-meeting-round level from 1992-2009 and find persistent differences in tone among FOMC members. We also document how Presidents of regional Federal Reserve Banks use a more volatile and positive tone than the Federal Reserve Bank Board of Governors members. Next, we investigate whether the tone used during FOMC deliberations is associated with future monetary policy decisions and study the drivers of differences in tone among FOMC members. Our results suggest that tone is useful in predicting future policy decisions and that differences in tone are mainly associated with the differences in the individual inflation projections of FOMC members. • Tone analysis offers deeper insights into FOMC decision-making, beyond dissenting votes. • Persistent differences in tone among FOMC members are identified from 1992 to 2009. • Regional Fed Presidents exhibit a more volatile and positive tone compared to Board of Governors members. • The tone used during FOMC meetings predicts future monetary policy decisions. • Differences in tone are primarily driven by individual inflation projections of FOMC members.