The Unassuming Economist

A new working paper introduces “an original panel dataset based on the text of country reports by the International Monetary Fund. It consists of a total of 2594 Article IV consultation and program review documents. The reports were published between 2004 and 2017 and cover 189 countries. The text of these reports provides a unique in-depth window into the IMF ‘s assessment of the most important macroeconomic issues. They provide indications of the perceived policy weaknesses, economic risks, ongoing reforms and implemented or neglected policy advice. Thus the content of IMF reports are widely used for qualitative and quantitative analysis in the economics, political science and IR literature.”

The paper also presents “three examples in applying text analytic techniques on the dataset to demonstrate and validate its application for research. First, [it] compares conventional measures of resource dependence with a metric based on term frequency in reports. ”

“Second, [it] analyzes mentions preceding reform events as a way to study reform intent.”

“Finally, [it] shows how mentions of keywords describing opposite fiscal policy stances mimic changes in IMF policy advice during the global financial crisis.”