Was the increase in income inequality in the US due to permanent shocks or merely to an increase in the variance of transitory shocks? The implications for consumption and welfare depend crucially on the answer to this question. We use CEX repeated cross-section data on consumption and income to...

This paper suggests an affine term structure model of real interest rates to predict changes in real consumption growth. The model is estimated, jointly, by real interest rates and consumption data, and it is found to be consistent with the consumption smoothing hypothesis. The paper shows that...

We study the role of consumer confidence in forecasting real personal consumption expenditure, and contribute to the extant literature in three substantive ways: First, we reexamine existing empirical models of consumption and consumer confidence not only at the quarterly frequency, but using...

This article is the first formal investigation of consumer attitudes that compares the forecasting power of the University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment and the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index. The authors find that measures available from the Conference Board have both...

In this paper we propose the use of an asymmetric binary link function to extend the proportional hazard model for predicting loan default. The rationale behind this approach is that the symmetry assumption, that has been widely used in the literature, could be considered as quite restrictive,...

In this study we introduce a new indicator for private consumption based on search query time series provided by Google Trends. The indicator is based on factors extracted from consumption-related search categories of the Google Trends application Insights for Search. The forecasting performance...

We assess the ability of the Reuters/Michigan Surveys of Consumers to predict future changes in consumer expenditures. The information in the Surveys is summarized by means of principal components of consumer attitudes with respect to income and wealth, interest rates, and prices. These summary...

Information about special events can improve economic forecasts substantially. However, due to the lack of timely quantitative data about these events, it has been difficult for professional forecasters to utilise such information in their forecasts. This paper investigates whether Internet...

In this study we introduce a new indicator for private consumption based on search query time series provided by Google Trends. The indicator is based on factors extracted from consumption-related search categories of the Google Trends application Insights for Search. The forecasting performance...

In this paper, we use high-frequency transaction data to develop a weekly tracker for private consumption expenditures. Furthermore, we apply the transaction data in a nowcasting experiment and compare their performance with other, readily available indicators that are regularly linked to...