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

Out of 11 questions included in the EU harmonised consumer questionnaire, it is possible to construct 2 047 different consumer confidence indicators. We search through all these indicators in order to find the single indicator that has the highest correlation with private consumption growth....

This study analyses consumption in urban China by use of monthly data for the 1990-2007. The error-correction model reveals a long-run relationship between real consumption, real disposable income, inflation and the shortterm interest rate. Inflation is in relative terms more important to the...

La crise mondiale et celle, plus récente, dans la zone euro ont eu tendance à raccourcir l’horizon prévisionnel et décisionnel de nombreux agents économiques. Dans le même temps, les incertitudes (sur l’emploi, les retraites…) poussent plutôt à la remontée du taux d’épargne des...

The paper studies the relationship between the local unemployment rate and wage level – commonly referred to as the wage curve. Using a panel data setup for annual enterprise-level microdata, we confirm previous findings that wages in Slovakia are, on the whole, relatively flexible – with a...

Three shocks, distinguished by whether their effects are permanent or transitory, are identified to characterize the post-war dynamics of aggregate consumer spending, labor earnings, and household wealth. The first shock accounts for virtually all of the variation in consumption; we argue that...

We argue that positive co-movements between land prices and business investment are a driving force behind the broad impact of land-price dynamics on the macroeconomy. We develop an economic mechanism that captures the co-movements by incorporating two key features into a DSGE model: We...

The widely studied Reuters/Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment is constructed from the answers to five questions from the more comprehensive Reuters/Michigan Surveys of Consumers. Yet little work has been done on what predictive power the information taken from this more thorough compilation of...

An extensive literature has analyzed the implications of hidden shifts in the dividend growth rate. However, corresponding research on learning about growth persistence is completely lacking. Hidden persistence is a novel way to introduce long-run risk into standard business-cycle models of...

La crise mondiale et celle, plus récente, dans la zone euro ont eu tendance à raccourcir l’horizon prévisionnel et décisionnel de nombreux agents économiques. Dans le même temps, les incertitudes (sur l’emploi, les retraites…) poussent plutôt à la remontée du taux d’épargne des...