How Should We Measure Consumer Confidence (Sentiment)? Evidence from the Michigan Survey of Consumers / Jeff Dominitz, Charles F. Manski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dominitz, Jeff.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Manski, Charles F.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w9926.

NBER working paper series no. w9926

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

How Should We Measure Consumer Confidence

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2003.

Summary:

The Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) and other indices of consumer confidence are prominent in public discourse on the economy but have little presence in modern economic research. The sparsity of modern research follows an earlier period when economists scrutinized in some depth the methods and data used to produce consumer confidence indices. The literature to date has focused on the predictive power of the survey data used to form the indices; there has been very little study of their micro foundations. This paper analyzes the responses to eight expectations questions that have appeared on the Michigan Survey of Consumers in the period June 2002 through May 2003. Four questions elicit micro and macroeconomic expectations in the traditional qualitative manner; two are components of the ICS. Four questions use a percent chance' format to elicit subjective probabilities of micro and macroeconomic events; versions of these questions have previously appeared in the Survey of Economic Expectations.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2003.