We construct a consumer sentiment index for the U.S. using the popularity trends of selected Google searches. The final index consists of four components and is highly correlated with the Index of Consumer Sentiment from the University of Michigan and the Consumer Confidence Index from the...

Household consumption constitutes two thirds of GDP in Hungary. Accordingly, in addition to influencing expected economic growth, consumption plays a prominent role in shaping pricing behaviour. Consequently, understanding and forecasting the consumption processes as precisely as possible can be...

We search through all possible consumer confidence indicators in order to find the single indicator that has the highest correlation with private consumption growth. Moreover, we contrast this indicator to the Consumer Confidence Indicator used by the European Commission, and some alternative...

This paper examines the ability of consumer confidence to forecast consumption expenditure in New Zealand. A two-step process commonly used by other researchers, which was developed by Carroll, Fuhrer and Wilcox (1994), was utilised. The two most widely followed and reported measures of consumer...

This paper presents two models of consumption for the primary purpose of forecasting consumption expenditure growth in New Zealand. The models, which are consistent with a range of consumption functions including the life-cycle and permanent income hypothesis, are error correction models with...

The monetary programme – constructed on a quarterly basis in the NBH – is a crucial internal product of the decision making process. The programme evaluates the development of net financing capacities of different sectors and the monetary survey and gives a financial side story about the...

This paper studies the ability of long-run risk models to explain out-of-sample asset returns during 1931-2009. The long-run risk models perform relatively well on the momentum effect. A cointegrated version of the model outperforms the classical, stationary version. Both the long-run and the...

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...

In recent years, India has enjoyed one of the highest growth rates worldwide, weathering the global financial crisis better than many other countries. Prudent macroeconomic policies will be critical to prolonging the current expansion, given the risks associated with high inflation and volatile...

By incorporating habit formation into an overlapping-generations economy, we show that the middle-aged consumers’ savings decision has a substantial impact on the equity premium. The higher incentive for savings for the middle-aged, resulting from the habit formation preference, causes an even...