Consumer Behavior Under the Influence of Terrorism Within the United States

Many indicators are helpful in improving statistical performance for forecasting and policy analysis. We do believe, however, no single indicator (or type of indicator) can do the necessary work by itself. Any new finding is likely to make a better contribution in combination with others that have been found to be useful. Timeliness, flexibility, and foresight are important properties of indicators, and we are especially interested in information that reflects subjective feelings of participants in the economy. Results of surveys covering consumers, producers or managers are useful in forecasting major macroeconomic variables, like personal consumption expenditures and personal income. Preliminary results indicate that models including survey results perform better than those that do not include survey results. Other surveys would be appropriate for such macroeconomic variables as industrial production, employment, and financial market averages.