We perform principal components analyses of the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment and TV sentiment in order to gain information on their structure and information content. By introducing the new sentiment variable TV sentiment, gathered from sentiment from statements from over...

This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the German population conducted on our behalf by GfK in the first quarter of 2013. The survey addresses important topics in fiscal policy, including: 1) public preferences on the...

Using a representative survey of the German population, this paper studies individual consumption responses to a recent payroll tax reduction. Our results show that 55% of the respondents spend the extra money, indicating considerable potential for tax changes to affect consumption and economic...