1. Schedule
  2. Speakers
  3. Practical information
  4. Registration

Click here to attend virtually to the workshop livestream (start at 14:00 on Thursday 09 December).

This a Teams meeting: You need to use Chrome or Edge browser or the Teams application (install it first).

This workshop is aimed at the increasing relevance of NLP for economic applications, both in terms of already operational language technology products and systems, and newly emerging methodologies and techniques reflecting the requirements at the intersection of economics, finance, econometrics and NLP.

The workshop is followed by the public PhD defense of Gilles Jacobs’ dissertation. Attendance for the defense is optional. If you decide to attend the defense, please go to the different livestream on that page.

Schedule

⯈ 14:00 - 15:00: Udo Hahn - How to Do Economics with Words: The Role of Natural Language (Processing) for Economic Stakeholders Shamelessly borrowing parts of the title of my presentation from John L. Austin’s seminal work “How to Do Things with Words” (1955), the impetus of pragmatics and the behavioral implications of natural language for economics sets the right tone of my talk. It is basically about the importance and (un)conscious effects of linguistic signals exchanged among economic stakeholders (companies, customers, the banking system, public administration and political institutions). A bird’s eye view is provided of fundamental methods used to uncover explicit and implicit messages and some prominent applications (e.g., NLP-based financial performance prediction for companies, product reviewing and framing via social media, forecasting of future (trans)national macroeconomic development, etc.). I will review earlier and current work going on at the intersection of economics and natural language processing, feature current multi-disciplinary activities in this domain from various perspectives, and close with up-coming challenges (mostly from an NLP perspective).

⯈ 15:00 - 15:45: Kris Boudt - From Media News Articles to Thematic Index Solutions for Monitoring the Economy. Sentometrics research is about using econometrics for analysing the sentiment extracted from qualitative data. I will provide an introduction to this research field as well as present case studies of operationalizing the research findings for applications in monitoring the state of the economy and credit risk using Belgian news articles.

■ 15:45 - 16:15: Coffee break

Speakers

Prof. Dr. Udo Hahn
Full Professor of Computational Linguistics - Head of the Jena University Language & Information Engineering (JULIE) Lab. Prof Hahn has published extensively on sentiment analysis and corpus construction for corporate and financial reporting.


Prof. Dr. Kris Boudt
Kris Boudt is professor of finance and econometrics at Ghent University, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is an instructor at DataCamp and cofounder of Sentometrics.

Practical information

Livestream

A livestream link will be provided at https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MmZlOGRlMGItNTY2MC00M2Q5LTljOTctMGRmMzNlZmYyOTFk%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22d7811cde-ecef-496c-8f91-a1786241b99c%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%222e8f420f-f46e-44d2-8680-be63cf8f984f%22%7d This a Teams meeting, which you can use in Chrome or Edge browser or the Teams application if you install it first.

Physical Location

Physical attendance requires a CovidSafe ticket and masks should be worn indoors.

Address: Het Pand, Onderbergen 1, 9000 Ghent
Room: 2.3 Rector August Vermeylen

⯈ How to reach Het Pand. By public transport
  • Take train to Gent-Sint-Pieter main station.
  • Take `Tram 1 Gent Flanders Expo - Wondelgem Industrieweg` → Stop Gent Korenmarkt (11min) → Walk to Het Pand (450m).
  • Or take `Tram 2 towards Zwijnaarde - Melle Leeuw` → Stop Gent Oude Houtlei (11min) → Walk to Het Pand (400m).
By car: Het Pand is located centrally in Ghent's Low Emission Zone (LEZ). See here for more info on parking.
  • If your car is allowed in the LEZ, the Parking P1 Vrijdagsmarkt is a good option. The smaller parking lots nearer to Het Pand (P6 Center, P7 St-Michiels, P8 Ramen) are often full.
  • If your car is not allowed, we recommend coming by train or parking in the P+R car parks (spec. Flanders Expo). Next take `Tram 1` to the city center.
⯈ Finding Room 2.3 Rector August Vermeylen. 1. Reaching the stairs/elevator:
  • Enter by the main entrance of Het Pand.
  • Go left.
  • Go till the end of the hallway.
  • Take the double glass door.
2a. By stairs:
  • Take 3x the stairs (up to the 1,5 floor).
  • Enter by the brown door at your left (zaal Rector August Vermeylen).
2b. By elevator:
  • Take the white door immediately at your right.
  • Go to the 2nd floor.
  • Go right.
  • Take a few steps down.
  • Enter by the brown door (zaal Rector August Vermeylen).

Registration

Contact: (0032) 472 62 72 04 or [email protected].