This study sheds new light on the question of whether or not sentiment surveys, and the expectations derived from them, are relevant to forecasting economic growth and stock returns, and whether they contain information that is orthogonal to macroeconomic and financial data. I examine 16...

Standard theory describes economic decisions as the result of optimising behaviour of well-informed economic agents. However, whether citizens are really well informed on economic data is still highly disputed. In order to investigate on this issue, since 2007 the Italian Consumers survey has...

This study examines the behaviour of key bank level stability factors of liquidity, capital, risk-taking and consumer confidence in Islamic and conventional banks which operate in the same market. Using fixed effect sample of 194 banks of Gulf Cooperating Countries between 2000 and 2007, we...

The following analysis, based on error correction models, suggests that consumer confidence, together with traditional macroeconomic variables, contains a forecasting and explicative power on consumption. By including consumer confidence in a consumption function, consumer confidence releases a...

The traditional consumption function based on the life cycle permanent income hypothesis (LC-PIH) considers that consumer spending is based on households’ expectations of their future income. However, in short-term forecasting, the traditional economic determinants of consumption do not...

This note develops a simple macro model where the pattern of wealth accumulation is determined by a credit multiplier and by the way households react to short run fluctuations. In this setup, long term wealth dynamics are eventually characterized by the presence of endogenous cycles.

The underlying nature of forecast optimization makes the rational expectations hypothesis (REH) a framework that is theoretically consistent with the expectations formation produced by economic agents under well-defined assumptions of unbiased forecasts and efficient utilization of available...

It is recognised that the understanding and accurate forecasts of key macroeconomic variables are fundamental for the success of any economic policy. In the case of monetary policy, many efforts have been made towards understanding the relationship between past and expected values of inflation,...

Since 2008 the global economy, following also the financial crisis, is facing a severe decline in economic activity and the economic estimates concerning the first quarter 2009 are even worse. While in the major industrialized economies Consumers Confidence Indicators (CCI) show common negative...

This paper is prepared against the broader background of the policy debates on the breeding, feeding and distributional consequences of dairy development in India. The data for the study is drawn from the National Dairy Sample Survey covering 186 districts spread over 14 major States in the...