Glad to see that my paper on ideational change inside the ECB is now published online by @jepp_journal: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
The paper builds on a simple argument: a battle of ideas dominated the economic debate on the euro crisis. One view stressed the importance of fiscal discipline (e.g., Alesina), the other highlighted the systemic roots of the crisis (e.g., @pdegrauwe).
Combining automated text classification and unsupervised scaling methods, I analyse ECB Executive Board members' speeches and show that the ECB has progressively moved from a fiscal to a systemic interpretation of the euro crisis. 
Significantly, this change anticipated Mario Draghi's "whatever it takes" pledge in summer 2012. Systemic risk ideas became prominent at the time of the OMT announcement.
The relative importance attributed to systemic risk is not driven by a North-South conflict inside the ECB Executive Board. Rather, the distribution of relative positions is characterised by a divide between old and new Board members.
Evidence suggests this ideational turn was incremental and driven by policy learning dynamics, as there are common trends and no major structural breaks corresponding to Board member replacements.
These findings contribute to a wider debate on the role of economic ideas in European policy-making. The paper highlights the importance of systemic risk narratives in the management of the euro crisis, and paints a more nuanced picture of economic beliefs inside the ECB.
Special thanks go to those who have inspired this project with their research. Some of them are @SattlersThomas @ManuMoschella @m2matthijs @Erik_Jones_SAIS @ProfKMcNamara @cornelban73 @MkBlyth @johnhopkin @BJMbraun @jmchwieroth @vivienaschmidt @nicolebaerg @JamesPCross
