How Much Information Do Monetary Policy Committees Disclose? Evidence from the FOMC's Minutes and Transcripts

The purpose of central bank minutes is to give an account monetary policy meeting discussions outside observers, thereby enabling them draw informed conclusions about future policy. However, are by necessity a shortened and edited representation broader discussion. Consequently, they may omit information that predictive decisions. To investigate this, we compare the content Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) transcripts, focusing on dimensions likely be excluded from minutes, such as committee's degree hawkishness, chairperson's level agreement between committee members. We measure chairperson hawkishness with new dictionary constructed using FOMC's transcripts. Agreement measured technique import machine learning literature. also show transcripts contain not included in FOMC macroeconomic variables, financial forecasts, or federal funds rate futures.