Twitter-Derived Measures of Economic Uncertainty

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY
Finance Department
Research Seminars in Finance

Thomas Renault

Topic: Twitter-Derived Measures of Economic Uncertainty

Speaker: Thomas Renault, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Abstract: We construct daily, weekly, and monthly Twitter Economic Uncertainty (TEU) indicators from 2011 onwards based on counts of tweets about the "economy" and "uncertainty.” We use geotagged tweets and users’ location inference based on friendships to construct a TEU index based on tweets sent by users located in the United States. Our TEU indicator behaves similarly to the newspaper-based Economic Policy Uncertainty index of Baker, Bloom and Davis (2016), which suggests that Twitter users and journalists have similar perceptions about the evolution of economic uncertainty.

Moderator: Vitali Alexeev, University of Technology Sydney

Date: Wednesday, 26th May 2021
Time: 5-6 pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
Venue: This is on online Zoom webinar.

Seminar protocols:

  • The webinar will run for 45 minutes, followed by a 15 minute Q&A session.
  • There will be a moderator for each seminar event, who will facilitate communication and resolve any technical issues.
  • Participants can use the chat facility or raise their had to ask questions during the presentation. The moderator will then alert the speaker at the appropriate time and either ask the questions raised or unmute the participant so they can ask the question directly to the presenter.

Co-ordinator: Harry Scheule

Enquiries: Duncan Ford

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