Political Risk and Sentiment

Political Risk (PRisk) and Sentiment (PSentiment) tracks when companies discuss political issues as a source of uncertainty -- and whether they frame those political developments as net positive or net negative.

The Curated Measure contains two core signals:

• PRisk: how intensely call participants discuss political matters in the context of risk or uncertainty. Higher PRisk means more of the conversation is devoted to political risks that could affect the firm.
• PSentiment: the net tone of political discussion (positive vs. negative) in those same political passages. Positive values indicate a more favorable framing; negative values indicate a more adverse framing.

In addition to the overall series, we provide topic-based PRisk that decomposes political risk into eight policy areas: Economy, Trade, Tax, Security, Institutions, Health, Environment, and Technology.

Common applications include:

• Identifying which firms are most exposed to political uncertainty at a point in time (and how that changes).
• Studying how political risk relates to investment, hiring, guidance, or volatility.
• Separating "politics is uncertain" (PRisk) from "politics is good/bad for us" (PSentiment).
• Pinpointing what kind of political risk is driving attention (e.g., trade vs. tax vs. regulation/institutions).
• Building sector- or country-level aggregates from firm-level signals while preserving firm heterogeneity.

Why it matters

Political events often matter most through firm-specific channels -- regulatory exposure, procurement dependence, licensing, cross-border supply chains, and industry-specific policy. Traditional measures tend to be slow-moving or too aggregate to reveal which firms are actually affected.

This dataset captures political risk as expressed by decision-makers and analysts in real time, namely what they choose to talk about when discussing outlook, operations, and constraints.