Irish Budget Speeches in the 21st Century

IRISH BUDGET SPEECHES in the 21st

CENTURY

MARK COUGHLANDepartment of Economics

University College CorkMark Coughlan | T: +35351873052 | M: +353877461420 | E: mjcoughlan1@gmail.com

LITERATURE ON ECONOMIC POLICY COMMUNICATION

Blinder et al (2008), Journal of Economic Literature

Burden and Sanberg (2003), Political Behaviour

Bulir et al (2013), Open Economies Review

Garrard et al (2013), Cortex

Jansen, D. (2011), Contemporary Economic Policy

Karapetjana (2011), Baltic Journal of English Language, Literature and Culture

Mark Coughlan | T: +35351873052 | M: +353877461420 | E: mjcoughlan1@gmail.com

LITERATURE ON ECONOMIC POLICY COMMUNICATION

Literature Focuses on Four Aspects of Policy Communication:

• CLARITY - Blinder et al (2008), Bulir et al (2013), Jensen (2011)

• VOLUME - Garrard et al (2013), Burden and Sanberg (2003)

• OWNERSHIP - Burden and Sanberg (2003), Karapetjana (2011)

• TONE - Burden and Sanberg (2003)

“...in a number of cases, there is a significant effect of clarity. In those cases, the direction of the effect is intuitive: greater clarity coincides with less volatility in financial markets.”

- Jensen (2011)

“We find that the global financial crisis contributed to making central bank communication less clear.”

-Bulir et al (2012)

CLARITY

VOLUME

“Volume is based on the notion that the frequency with which a candidate mentions a particular issue reflects the importance the candidate assigns to it.”

– Burden and Sanberg (2003:102)

“The quantitative analysis of text is primarily based on the proposition that preference profiles of speakers can be constructed from their word frequencies. This makes word frequencies the most important data input to almost all existing methods of text analysis.”

- Mikhaylov and Herzog (2010:9)

Burden and Sanberg (2003:99) state that an “incumbent candidate wants to take credit for positive performance and deflect blame for poor performance”.

OWNERSHIP

“Tone accounts for a efforts to use rhetoric to shape voter’s point of view...”

- Burden and Sanberg (2003:102)

GARRARD et al (2013)

The full text of Irish budget speeches delivered during the period 2000 to 2014

METHODS: CLARITY

Flesch Kincaid Grade measurement is an Indicator of Text Clarity based on Average Sentence Length and Average Number of Syllables per Word.

The formula for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score is:

(.39 x ASL) + (11.8 x ASW) – 15.59Mark Coughlan | T: +35351873052 | M: +353877461420 | E: mjcoughlan1@gmail.com

METHODS: VOLUME

Word Frequencies: Calculated using KWIC software.

“The quantitative analysis of text is primarily based on the proposition that preference profiles of speakers can be constructed from their word frequencies. This makes word frequencies the most important data input to almost all existing methods of text analysis.”

- Mikhaylov and Herzog (2010:9)

METHODS: OWNERSHIP

Word Frequencies: Calculated using KWIC software.

Focus on Pronominal Preference

“The first person singular pronoun I refers to the speaker and shows his personal involvement, being especially useful when good news is announced.”

“The plural pronoun forms [we] give a sense of collectivity and help to share responsibility, especially when decisions are highly controversial, unpopular and doubtful.”

- Karapetjana (2011)

METHODS: TONE

• Semantria is a text analytics software programme used to determine tone of a text.

• Semantria assigns a score to each sentence. Score > 0 indicates a positive tone. Score < 0 indicates a negative tone.

• Average sentiment score is sum of sentiment scores of each sentence divided by the number of sentences in text.

TEXTUAL CLARITY

RESULTS: CLARITY

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 10.0

FKG Measurement of Budget Speeches 1924 to 2014

RESULTS: CLARITY

FKG Measurment of Budget Speeches 1980 to 1989

1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 199012.8

RESULTS: CLARITY

1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 10.5

FKG Measurment of Budget Speeches 2000 to 2014

RESULTS: VOLUME

McCreevy Cowen Lenihan Noonan -

4.91 7.34 1.55

7.37 7.21

17.92 10.86

9.92 5.67

WelfareSocialHealthDisabilityChildCare

Top Expenditure Related Words in Budget Speeches 2000 to 2014. Frequencies of Occurrence, per 1,000 words

OWNERSHIP: THE CREDIT

“Many have beaten a path to our door to inquire how we did it. We did not achieve all this merely by chance. The actions of Government in setting a sound economic and fiscal policy played a key role in achieving our current success” (Budget 2005)

“We are living in the midst of the longest and strongest era of sustained prosperity in our history. This did not happen by chance. It involved careful planning” (Budget 2006)

“The success we enjoy now has been brought about by the hard work of our people, responding to the policies of this Government” (Budget 2007)

“That success is down to the commitment and drive of our people. Recent Governments have succeeded in managing the growth of the economy so that it has been sustained for much longer than anticipated” (Budget 2008)

OWNERSHIP: THE BLAME“We find ourselves in one of the most difficult and uncertain times in living memory. Turmoil in the financial markets and steep increases in commodity prices have put enormous pressures on economies throughout the world.” (Budget 2009)

“Rapid growth in the early years was driven by exports. As in many other countries, the later stages were accompanied by a property bubble, fuelled in part by very low interest rates and the ready availability of credit” (Supplementary Budget 2009)

“the Government’s strategy over the last eighteen months is working and we can now see the first signs of a recovery here at home and in our main international markets”; (Budget 2010)

“we need their [EU/IMF] support to break the vicious cycle that has threatened our national finances and our banking system since the second quarter of this year. Following the Greek crisis this spring, funding for the State and our banks became increasingly expensive.” (Budget 2011)

“We got into this position by seeking, with the full support of those opposite, to spread the benefits of the boom across every section of the population.” (Budget 2010)

RESULTS: OWNERSHIP

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2009* 2010 2011 2012 2013 20140

Ratio of the Number of Occurrences of ‘WE’ to ‘I’

RESULTS: TONE

1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 20160

Average Sentiment Scores of Budget Speeches 2000 - 2014

CONCLUSIONS

CLARITY: Greater clarity in Lenihan budgets not expected given volatile economic background.

VOLUME: Tendency for Ministers to emphasise popular aspects of policy and de-emphasise unpopular aspects expected.

OWNERSHIP: As expected for McCreevy, Cowen, and Lenihan Budgets, but not for Noonan budgets.

TONE: Consistently Positive Tone as expected. Slight drop in positivity in Lenihan and Noonan budgets to be expected given adverse economic and budgetary situation

THANK YOU

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