From Tone to Trajectory: Continuous Sentiment and the Shape of Monetary Policy Communication

Central bank press conferences are not merely information releases --- they are structured narratives. We study whether the shape of sentiment within a statement, not just its average tone, carries policy-relevant signals. Constructing sentiment arcs for ECB and Fed press conferences along three dimensions --- monetary stance, economic outlook, and uncertainty --- we assess their predictive content for policy rate changes, inflation expectations, and forecaster disagreement. Our findings show that arc shape robustly predicts rate decisions beyond lexicon-based benchmarks at both institutions --- it is not merely whether a statement sounds hawkish or economically optimistic on average, but how these sentiments are sequenced and emphasized across the statement, that carries the policy signal. Arc features also shape how professional forecasters update inflation expectations and how much they disagree, pointing to a receiver-side effect distinct from the direct policy signal. These findings suggest that communication design --- the sequencing and emphasis of policy language across a statement --- is a first-order feature of the policy signal, not a second-order refinement.