Measuring inflation expectations ofthe Russian population with the help of machine learning

Abstract

The paper proposes a new approach to measure inflation expectations of the Russian population based on text mining of information on the Internet with the help of machine learning techniques. Two indicators were constructed on the base of readers’ comments to inflation news in major Russian economic media available in the web at the period from 2014 through 2016: with the help of words frequency and sentiment analysis of comments content. During the whole considered period of time both indicators were characterized by dynamics adequate to the development of macroeconomic situation and were also able to forecast dynamics of official Bank of Russia indicators of population inflation expectations for approximately one month in advance.