Monetary stance and favorableness of the monetary policy in the media: the case of Vietnam

Purpose This paper analyzes the effects of the monetary stance on the media's favorable (or otherwise) attitude to the State Bank of Vietnam's (SBV) monetary policy using monthly data from 2011 to 2021. Monetary stance is a multivariate index based on the growth rates of money supply and domestic credit. A large set of articles published in five Vietnam daily newspapers are utilized to construct a view of the media's favorableness to the monetary policy. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses hand-collected data from 211 articles published in five newspapers from December 2011 to September 2021 in order to examine the relationship between the monetary stance and the media's favorableness to monetary policy. Following the studies of He and Pauwels (2008) and Xiong (2012), the authors constructed a multivariate stance index to capture most of the important changes in the SBV's monetary policy stance. Findings The study's main findings are that a change in monetary stance from easing to neutral/tightening, or from neutral to tightening, is greatly appreciated by the media. The study's findings are robust, especially in terms of alternative measures of the media's favorableness and monetary policy variables. Research limitations/implications These findings have important policy implications for implementing SBV's monetary policy. Originality/value The main contribution of this paper is that the authors are the first to study the nexus of multivariate monetary stance and the media's favorableness to a central bank's non-inflation-targeting mandate. In particular, the study’s findings confirm that the SBV's multivariate monetary stance affects the media's favorableness, whereas the effect of inflation is statistically insignificant.