Does consumer sentiment predict regional consumption?

This paper tests the ability of consumer sentiment to predict retail spending at the state level. The results here suggest that, although there is a significant relationship between sentiment measures and retail sales growth in several states, consumer sentiment exhibits only modest predictive power for future changes of retail spending. Measures of consumer sentiment, however, contain additional explanatory power aside from the information available in other indicators. We also find that by restricting our attention to fluctuations in retail sales that occur at the business cycle frequency we can uncover a significant relationship between consumer sentiment and retail sales growth in many additional states. In light of these results, we conclude that the practical value of sentiment indices to forecast consumer spending at the state level is, at best, limited.Consumer behavior ; Consumption (Economics) ; Economic indicators

Constructing Consumer Sentiment Index for U.S. Using Google Searches

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 Conference Board. Among the three sentiment indices, the Google search-based index (SBI) leads in time and predicts other indices. In terms of forecasting consumer spending, the SBI outperforms both the ICS and the CCI and provides independent information. For robustness, we use multiple measures of consumer spending and a range of statistical specifications. The finding is robust.consumer sentiment; consumer confidence; leading economic indicators

The Predictive Power of the Index of Consumer Sentiment

consumer sentiment, predictive power, index of consumer sentiment, macroeconomics

Denoised Least Squares Forecasting of GDP Changes Using Indexes of Consumer and Business Sentiment

Indexes of consumer and business sentiment are frequently characterized by measurement errors and short-term cyclical fluctuations that can distort their predictive accuracy for GDP changes. While measurement errors arise due to the survey sampling procedures that characterize these surveys, short-term cyclical fluctuations are generally linked with various exogenous and irregular factors that are not necessarily related to the economy. This paper shows, using data on the US economy, that applying wavelet denoising on indexes of consumer and business sentiment in the context of the linear regression model can overcome these limitations and can provide: (a) efficient coefficient estimates in models that explain consumer sentiment index variation; and (b) consistent coefficient estimates and predictions in models for GDP changes when using consumer and business sentiment indexes as predictors.Consumer sentiment index, denoised least squares, index of homebuilders’sentiment, index of manufacturing activity, measurement errors.

Consumer Sentiment and Spending on Consumer Durables

macroeconomics, consumer

Automatic domain ontology extraction for context-sensitive opinion mining

Automated analysis of the sentiments presented in online consumer feedbacks can facilitate both organizations’ business strategy development and individual consumers’ comparison shopping. Nevertheless, existing opinion mining methods either adopt a context-free sentiment classification approach or rely on a large number of manually annotated training examples to perform context sensitive sentiment classification. Guided by the design science research methodology, we illustrate the design, development, and evaluation of a novel fuzzy domain ontology based contextsensitive opinion mining system. Our novel ontology extraction mechanism underpinned by a variant of Kullback-Leibler divergence can automatically acquire contextual sentiment knowledge across various product domains to improve the sentiment analysis processes. Evaluated based on a benchmark dataset and real consumer reviews collected from Amazon.com, our system shows remarkable performance improvement over the context-free baseline

Consumer sentiment and consumer spending: decomposing the granger causal relationship in the time domain.

Consumer sentiment; Time;

Habits, Sentiment and Predictable Income in the Dynamics of Aggregate Consumption

This paper explores whether habit formation in the representative agent’s preferences can explain two failures of the standard permanent income model: the sensitivity to lagged consumer sentiment, and to predictable changes in income. I show that in a habit formation model, the sensitivity of consumption to predicted income can be largely reinterpreted as a sluggish response to news. Moreover, the sensitivity of consumption to sentiment reflects the serial correlation in consumption growth generated by habits. The estimated model predicts an immediate (first-quarter) MPC out of a permanent tax cut of only about 30%.Consumer sentiment, excess sensitivity, habit formation, consumption, marginal propensity to consume, tax cuts

Consumer sentiment: its causes and effects

This paper finds that consumer attitudes, as reflected in surveys of consumer sentiment, have a significant influence on household purchases of durable goods. Normally, consumer sentiment moves with current economic conditions and bears a stable relationship to a few economic variables. At times of a major economic or political event like the Gulf War, however, consumer sentiment can move independently from current economic conditions. At such times it provides useful information about future consumer expenditures that is not otherwise available.Consumer behavior ; Consumption (Economics)

Investor Sentiment Measures

This paper compares investor sentiment measures based on consumer confidence surveys with measures extracted from the closed-end fund discount (CEFD). Our evidence suggests that these two kinds of sentiment measures do not correlate well with one another. For a short 2 - 4 year period in which we have direct investor sentiment survey data from UBS/Gallup, only the consumer confidence correlates well with investor sentiment. Further, only the consumer confidence based measure can robustly explain the small-firm return spread and the return spread between stocks held disproportionately by retail investors and those held by institutional investors. Surprisingly, there is even a hint that the consumer confidence measure can explain closed-end fund IPO activity, while the CEFD cannot. In sum, our evidence supports the view that sentiment plays a role in financial markets, but that the CEFD may be the wrong measure of sentiment.