Text Algorithms in Economics

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the methods used for algorithmic text analysis in economics, with a focus on three key contributions. First, we introduce methods for representing documents as high-dimensional count vectors over vocabulary terms, for representing words as vectors, and for representing word sequences as embedding vectors. Second, we define four core empirical tasks that encompass most text-as-data research in economics and enumerate the various approaches that have been taken so far to accomplish these tasks. Finally, we flag limitations in the current literature, with a focus on the challenge of validating algorithmic output.