Indicators of trust, confidence, optimism or sentiment among consumers and/or investors, are published continuously in the mass media. More importantly, these indices seem not only to reflect how the state of the real economy is perceived by private agents, but can also help predict the future...

Excise duties are an important source of government revenue and their rates change relatively often in the Czech Republic. Reforms of excise duties change the prices of goods, a change to which households respond by adjusting their expenditures. I use detailed Czech Statistical Office data and...