Bonaparte FPPI

Methodology

To provide a transparent and detailed explanation of how the FPPI is constructed.

Methodology

Provide a transparent and detailed explanation of how the Fed-President Pressure Index (FPPI) is constructed-from raw sources and labeling, through model training, to a single continuous index.

Newspaper Sources
List and describe the newspaper sources used to construct the FPPI.

To ensure broad and representative media coverage, the news data is drawn from a curated set of major U.S. outlets:

  • The New York Times
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • USA Today
  • The Miami Herald
  • The Chicago Tribune
  • The Washington Post
  • The Los Angeles Times
  • The Boston Globe
  • The San Francisco Chronicle
  • The Dallas Morning News
  • Dow Jones Newswire
  • The Associated Press

We reviewed over 61 million articles published between 1980 and 2025 and identified 68,850 that reflect presidential pressure on the Federal Reserve.

Defining "Political Pressure"
PP
A clear, concise definition used for labeling and evaluation.

Political Pressure (PP) is any public statement or documented communication that attempts to influence the Federal Reserve's policy stance, timing, or decision-making process. Examples include explicit directives (e.g., "the Fed should cut now"), conditional threats/rewards tied to policy, or persistent calls designed to sway outcomes.

Non-pressure content includes neutral commentary, retrospective explanations, or general economic discussion without prescriptive direction aimed at the Fed.

Keyword Logic for News Identification
The filtering logic applied to news data for FPPI construction.

As part of the index construction, I used the following keyword logic to identify relevant news articles:

("Federal Reserve" OR "Jerome Powell" OR "monetary policy")
AND
("President" OR "President Biden" OR "White House")
AND
("disagree" OR "oppose" OR "clash" OR "criticize" OR "warn" OR "pressure" OR "conflict")