Title page 1

Contents 1

Abstract 2

1. Introduction 3

2. Beige Book History 4

3. Literature Review 5

4. Sentiment in Beige Books 6

5. Econometric Analysis 8

5.1. Beige Book Sentiment and Economic Growth 9

5.2. Beige Book Sentiment and Recessions 13

5.3. Beige Book Sentiment and Regional Economic Activity 18

6. Topical Analysis 24

7. Conclusion 30

References 33

Tables 11

Table 1. Real GDP Growth Nowcasting Results (COVID excluded) 11

Table 2. Real GDP Growth Forecasting Results (COVID excluded) 12

Table 3. Comparisons of Out-of-Sample Nowcasts, Ratios of RMSEs 13

Table 4. Economic Recession Nowcasting Results (COVID excluded) 15

Table 5. Economic Recession Forecasting Results (COVID excluded) 16

Table 6. Federal Reserve Bank-Level Panel Regressions 22

Table 7. LDA Analysis in Beige Books 30

Figures 4

Figure 1. Beige Book History (1970-2023) 4

Figure 2. Beige Book Natural Language Processing 7

Figure 3. Beige Book Sentiment and U.S. Real GDP Growth 8

Figure 4. Recession Probability Forecasting with 95% CI 17

Figure 5. Out-of-Sample Recession Nowcast 18

Figure 6. Beige Book FinBERT Sentiment and Regional GDP Growth by Year 20

Figure 7. Beige Book FinBERT Sentiment and Regional GDP Growth by Federal Reserve District 21

Figure 8. Reserve Bank Nowcast GDP Growth in 2025 23

Figure 9. Topics: Supply Chain Hits vs GSCPI 25

Figure 10. Topics: Inflation Hits vs Inflation Rate 26

Figure 11. Topics: Unemployment Hits vs Unemployment Rate 27

Figure 12. Topics: Foreign/Int'l Hits 28