Ideology and monetary policy. The role of political parties’ stances in the European Central Bank’s parliamentary hearings

Abstract

We investigate the link between ideology and the sentiments of parliamentarians when they speak to the central bank they hold accountable. To this end, we collect textual data on the quarterly hearings of the ECB President before the European Parliament from 1999 to 2019. We apply sentiment analysis to more than 1900 speeches of individual Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from 128 parties. We find robust evidence that MEPs’ sentiments towards the ECB are correlated with the ideological stance predominantly on a pro-/anti-European dimension rather than on a left–right dimension.