The three main research areas of the professorship:

RESEARCH AREA "COMPUTATIONAL TEXT ANALYSIS"

Analysis of text corpora of economic policy statements
Here, computational linguistic methods are applied to (large) text corpora with a focus on the operationalisation of concepts such as "narrative" (in the sense of the literature on "narrative economics", Shiller, 2018) or the measurement of ideological and/or theoretical positions with appropriate methods. In a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2019 to 2022, methods from political science and computational linguistics will be used to analyse the experience-expectation nexus and, in particular, the role of ideological positions on economic policy in the adjustment of expectations. In addition, concepts for the operationalisation of narratives are developed using various text-analytical methods (topic field models, latent semantic analysis, structural topic field models). Several dissertation projects at the chair focus on computational content analysis of discourses on labour market and distributional issues.

Inflation narratives
Since 2023, research on narratives has also been continued within the project "Inflation narratives in large text corpora". The project is funded as a cross-disciplinary lab in cooperation with the Semantic Systems Research Group (Prof. Dr. Ricardo Usbeck) of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hamburg.

Contact at the chair
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Fritsche
Max Weinig
Lisa Wegner
Victoria Hünewaldt

Behaviour of professional forecasters
This research area investigates when, how and why forecasters behave in a herdlike manner. Particular attention is paid to the distinction between information rigidities and herd behaviour. The role of fundamental crises, such as the 2008 financial crisis or the Corona pandemic, will also be examined. From 2015 to 2019, the project "Macroeconomic Forecasting in Great Crises" (in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Jörg Döpke, FH Merseburg and Prof. Dr. Christian Pierdzioch, HSU Hamburg) is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the priority programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation: Historical Foundations of Economic Action".
For further information please contact
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Fritsche

Inflation expectations and inflation perceptions of households
This topic deals with the application of behavioural economic decision theories and perceptual heuristics to the formation of expectations, especially those of households. Particular attention is paid to the role of media coverage in this process. The research area was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the period 2008-2012. The 2nd wave of the Hamburg BUS survey examined in detail the inflation perceptions and expectations of Hamburg households by socio-economic groups and risk assessments. In 2015, Prof. Dr. Lena Dräger and Prof. Dr. Ulrich Fritsche examined households' inflation perceptions and expectations and their relationship to savings and consumption decisions as part of the project "Inflation Perceptions and Expectations of Households and their Relationship to Savings and Consumption Decisions: Survey Evidence for Germany".
For further information please contact
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Fritsche
Max Weinig