Consumer sentiment may predict future household spending, either because sentiment is an independent causal force or because it foreshadows current economic conditions. The empirical evidence we present favors the second interpretation. The evidence in previous research that favors the first...

Comparison of three survey measures of one-year-ahead CPI inflation- Livingston, Michigan, and Professional Forecasters-permits assessment of their accuracy, predictive content, and rationality. The author uses the test of Granger-causality to investigate predictive content and real-time data on...

What determines inflation? Several theoretical models of the inflation process have been advanced in the literature, and these models typically yield different predictions about the role of certain variables in determining prices. To illustrate, consider, for example, the expectations-augmented...