Identifying Policy Direction Change from Economic Texts Using Words as Data

Abstract

We examined to what extent the economic and political factors influence policy ideas by deconstructing the economic policy direction reports into words. In this study, the economic factor was set as the economic growth rate, and the political factor was government change. We empirically tested whether economic and political factors affect policy ideas using text mining, correspondence analysis, and ANOVA. The empirical analysis results show the economic policy direction report forms the basic framework of the idea by centering on a few keywords that appear repeatedly, and the words as ideas constantly reemerge or mix in competition with each other. The results provide empirical support for recent scholarship focusing on the perceptions and ideas of actors and the interactions of economic and political factors. This study is meaningful because it empirically tested the importance of policy ideas affected by economic and political factors. Institutional change analysis suggests the possibility of empirical tests and micro-level analyses, such as actors, ideas, and institutions. The logic structure is expected to be refined in the future.