[...]This study is the first formal investigation ofconsumer attitudes that compares the forecasting power ofthe University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentimentand the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index.We begin with a background analysis of structural differencesbetween the...

This paper studies the ability of a general class of habit-based asset pricing models to match the conditional moment restrictions implied by asset pricing theory.

Asset market values react to economic news and policychanges, and consumers react to changes in asset marketvalues. The consumption-wealth channel of monetary policyspells out this mechanism: changes in monetary policy affectasset values, which in turn affect consumer spending onnondurable goods...

"This paper uses the factor augmented regression framework to analyze the relation between bond excess returns and the macro economy. Using a panel of 131 monthly macroeconomic time series for the sample 1964:1-2007:12, we estimate 8 static factors by the method of asymptotic principal...