1. Looking at Congressional Committee Deliberations from Different Perspectives: Is the Added Effort Worth It?
Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey
London School of Economics & Political Science

2. A robustness check for textual analysis
Do my data look different when I examine them from different perspectives or using different methodological toolkits?
16/11/2018

3. Two textual data files from Deliberating Monetary Policy
Congressional hearings on monetary policy oversight, 1976 – 2008 (61 hearings in total)
House Financial Services Committee & Senate Banking Committee
Volcker
Burns
Bernanke
Miller
Greenspan
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5. Figure 3: Rate of Inflation over Time

6. Figure 1: Summary Results from Deliberating Monetary Policy
Does talking past eachother constitute deliberation? MCs talk about one set of topics; the Fed Chair talks about another.

7. Figure 2: Summary Results from Deliberating Monetary Policy

8. Does the story change, from…
(1) Members of Congress who do not engage with the Fed chairman on monetary policy per se
(2) Only marginal differences between the discourse in the House and Senate
(3) A change over time in the discourse on inflation (especially a growing acceptance and lack of challenge to the low inflation consensus)?
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9. 16/11/2018

10. Figure 4: Dendrogram of T-Lab Clusters for House Hearings 1976-2008
Inflation & Prices
Monetary Aggregates
Mostly Monetary Policy
Labour Market
Bank Lending & Credit Creation
Monetary Policy
Banking Regulation
Fed/Congress; Committees
Uncertainty
Other Politics; Fiscal Policy
Budget Deficit / Surplus
Fiscal Policy
Revenue (Tax Cuts); Social Security
16/11/2018
C. Schonhardt-Bailey, London School of Economics

11. Figure 5: Dendrogram of T-Lab Clusters for Senate Hearings 1976-2008
Real Economy & Labour Market
Monetary Policy
Mix Btwn Fiscal & Monetary (role of Congress & Fed)
Questioning the Direction of Monetary Policy
Financial Regulation: Fed’s Role
Financial Regulation
Banking Structure & Regulation
Inflation & Prices
Monetary Policy
Monetary Aggregates
“High” (Interest Rate)
Measuring Real Economy
Change in Variables (relating to Real Economy)
“Percent” (Unemployment/Growth)
Fiscal Policy
Fiscal Policy
16/11/2018
C. Schonhardt-Bailey, London School of Economics

12. Figure 6: House Hearings, 9 Cluster Partition, by Role of Participant –
Top 3 Clusters
Inflation & Prices
Uncertainty
Monetary Policy
Fiscal Policy
Inflation & Prices
Monetary Aggregates
Uncertainty
Fed/Congress; Committees
And
Fiscal Policy
Fed/Congress; Committees
16/11/2018
C. Schonhardt-Bailey, London School of Economics

13. Figure 7: Senate Hearings, 9 Cluster Partition, by Role of Participant –
Top 3 Clusters
Monetary Aggregates
Change in Variables (relating to Real Economy)
Inflation & Prices
Change in Variables (relating to Real Economy)
Real Economy & Labour Market
Real Economy & Labour Market
Change in Variables (relating to Real Economy)
Monetary Aggregates
Fiscal Policy
16/11/2018
C. Schonhardt-Bailey, London School of Economics

14. Figure 8: Senate Hearings, 9 Cluster Partition, by Party Affiliation
Monetary Aggregates
Inflation & Prices
Real Economy & Labour Market
Real Economy & Labour Market
Banking Structure & Regulation
16/11/2018
C. Schonhardt-Bailey, London School of Economics

15. Figure 9: Alceste results for Monetary Aggregates theme
House
Senate
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16. Figure 10: House Hearings: Chronology of themes in corpus
First table analysed through Correspondence Analysis:
Contingency table cross-tabulating 20 years and the 1242 lemmas appearing at least 50 times.
On the right hand side of the first (horizontal) principal axis, the years 1976 – 1986 (yr76 – yr86).
On the left hand side, the years 97 – 2008.
Note the atypical location of 2008 (yr08).
Figure 10: House Hearings: Chronology of themes in corpus
16/11/2018

17. Figure 11: Second table analysed through Correspondence Analysis (testing a very large threshold of frequency) 
Contingency table cross-tabulating 20 years and the 303 lemmas appearing at least 300 times. 
Again, on the right hand side of the first (horizontal) principal axis, the years 76 – 86.
On the left hand side, the years 97 – 2008.
Note again the atypical location of 2008.
The pattern is less continuous than previously, but the main features are roughly the same.
16/11/2018

18. Early period in right quadrants; later period in left quadrants
Figure 12: House Hearings (using very high frequency threshold) - 6 Clusters of contiguous years that are homogeneous from a lexical point of view: (1) late 1970s; (2) mid-1980s; (3) early 1990s; (4) late 1990s; (5) ; and (6)
Early period in right quadrants; later period in left quadrants
Monetary Aggregates, Labour Market, Inflation
Housing, Credit Crisis, Risk 1 6
US Economy 4 2
Inflation, Interest Rates (Volcker Revolution), Monetary Aggregates 5
Labour Market, Fiscal Policy 3
Fiscal Policy
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19. Correspondence Analysis: Years x lemmas) [20 years, 441 lemmas]
Figure 13: SENATE HEARINGS - First table analysed through Correspondence Analysis:
Contingency table cross-tabulating 20 years and the 441 lemmas appearing at least 200 times.
On the right hand side of the first (horizontal) principal axis, the years 1976 (hidden by 1977) – 1984 (yr76 – yr84).
On the left hand side, the years 98 – 2008.
Note the atypical location of 1992 and The most extreme point are 1981 (right) and 2004 (left), the compact cluster of the last years (98 – 2008).
16/11/2018
Correspondence Analysis: Years x lemmas) [20 years, 441 lemmas]

20. Figure 14: SENATE HEARINGS - 4 Clusters of contiguous years that are homogeneous from a lexical point of view: (1) late 70s/early 80s; (2) mid-80s; (3) early 90s; (4) late 90s & early 2000s
Early period in right quadrants; later period in left quadrants
(Three years remain isolated: 1986, 1991, ) 3
Labour Market, Fiscal Policy 1
Monetary Aggregates, Inflation & Credit Controls, Interest Rates (Volcker Revolution) 2 4
US Economy & Productivity; Focus on Greenspan, Social Security, Labour Market
Bank Lending, Current Account Deficit, International Focus
16/11/2018

21. Figure 15: Example of statistical inference on textual data (Senate corpus). Confidence areas in the plane spanned by axes 1 and 2 from the correspondence analysis of the lexical table (years x words)
From
Inflation & Interest Rates
To . . .
Jobs, US Economy, Social Security and Financial Regulation
16/11/2018

22. The punch line
Does it make sense to conduct multiple analyses on textual data in order to check for robustness?
Do such analyses produce new knowledge?
16/11/2018

23. The punch line
Does it make sense to conduct multiple analyses on textual data in order to check for robustness?
Do such analyses produce new knowledge?
Not really
16/11/2018

24. The punch line
Does it make sense to conduct multiple analyses on textual data in order to check for robustness?
If the reward is greater knowledge / new insights … probably not.
If the reward is greater certainty in the results
… yes, it is worth the added effort.
Do such analyses produce new knowledge?
Not really
16/11/2018

25. Figure 13: Alceste Analysis, by Themes and Tags
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26. House Hearings, Correspondence Analysis in 3 dimensions
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27. Senate Hearings, Correspondence Analysis in 3 dimensions
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28. House Hearings, Correspondence Space of 9 Clusters (with auto labels)
16/11/2018
C. Schonhardt-Bailey, London School of Economics

29. House Hearings, 9 Clusters in 3 Dimensions
16/11/2018
C. Schonhardt-Bailey, London School of Economics

30. House Hearings, Correspondence Space of 10 Clusters (with auto labels)
16/11/2018
C. Schonhardt-Bailey, London School of Economics

31. Senate Hearings, Correspondence Space of 9 Clusters, with lemmas and auto labels
16/11/2018
C. Schonhardt-Bailey, London School of Economics

32. Senate Hearings, Correspondence Analysis in 9 Clusters
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