Strength of words: Donald Trump's tweets, sanctions and Russia's ruble

Dmitriy O. Afanasyev, Elena Fedorova, Svetlana Ledyaeva*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)
398 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We empirically test if the US President Donald Trump's rhetoric towards Russia (represented by his Russia-related tweets) affects ruble's exchange rate. Using three-stepped empirical framework, we find that escalation of negative sentiment of Trump's Russia-related tweets leads to ruble's depreciation (4–10%) in short-term periods (around 3 days). Though these episodes tend to coincide with imposition or announcement of US sanctions, we demonstrate that US sanctions that were not accompanied by negative tweets of Donald Trump, have not caused ruble's depreciation. This highlights the role of emotional factors in economic decision-making behavior.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)253-277
Number of pages25
JournalJournal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume184
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2021
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • ARMAX-GARCH
  • Donald Trump
  • elastic net
  • Exchange rate
  • Markov regime-switching model
  • Russian ruble
  • sentiment analysis
  • social media
  • Twitter

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