Consumer Confidence and Elections

We investigate the behavior of consumer confidence around national elections in the EU-15 countries during 1985:1-2007:3. Consumer confidence increases before the date of elections and falls subsequently by almost the same amount. It is able to predict the strength of the performance of the incumbent party and its probability of re-election both alone and in the presence of macroeconomic and fiscal variables. The post-election drop is negatively related to the previous run up and is a function of the political - but not the economic - environment. A similar rise and fall characterizes consumer confidence in the United States.consumer confidence, national elections, incumbent party, macro-economy, fiscal conditions, political business cycle, EU-15, USA.

Organic labbeling systems and consumer confidence

A research analysis suggests that a state certification and labelling system creates confidence in organic labelling systems and consequently green consumerism. Danish consumers have higher levels of confidence in the labelling system than consumers in countries where the state plays a minor role in labelling and certification

Consumer confidence after September 11

The terrorist attacks on September 11 dealt a serious blow to the U.S. economy. The damage included the tragic loss of human life, massive property destruction, and disruptions to the travel and shipping industries. But immediately after the attacks, many observers also worried about the possible harm to business and consumer confidence. Although the effects on business confidence are hard to measure, regular surveys of households make it easier to assess the effects on consumer confidence. These surveys show that consumer confidence was surprisingly resilient.> Faced with this resilience, forecasters and policymakers struggled to interpret the movements in consumer confidence. Did consumers quickly return to more normal economic behavior even though they were shocked by the terrorist attacks? Or was the resilience somehow illusory? Were measures of consumer confidence actually lower than would be expected based on prevailing economic conditions? The answers to these questions might have implications about the economic outlook or the proper settings for monetary and fiscal policy.> Garner examines the impact of the terrorist attacks on consumer confidence at the end of 2001. He finds that the terrorist attacks did not cause a clear weakening of consumer confidence after September 11. As a result, the consumer confidence indexes maintained a fairly normal relationship to other economic indicators and did not contain much new information for forecasters and policymakers. The resilience of consumer confidence may have offered some assurance, however, that the worst fears about the economic outlook would not be realized.Consumers ; Consumer behavior ; Terrorism

Maintaining consumer confidence in electronic payment mechanisms

Credit card fraud is already a significant factor inhibiting consumer confidence in e-commerce. As more advanced payment systems become common, what legal and technological mechanisms are required to ensure that fraud does not do long-term damage to consumers' willingness to use electronic payment mechanisms

NH Consumer Confidence Falls 11/1/13

Expectations about business conditions in the Granite State and in the U.S. have fallen sharply. New Hampshire adults also report drops in their household financial condition. While this may be a reaction to the recent government shutdown and debt ceiling debates, it does not bode well for economic growth in the state. This drop in confidence among New Hampshire residents is consistent with a decrease in consumer confidence nationwide

Eco-Labelling, the State and Consumer Confidence

Trustworthy eco-labels provide consumers with valuable information on environmentally friendly products and thus promote green consumerism. But what makes an eco-label trustworthy and what can government do to increase consumer confidence? The scant existing literature seems to argue that low governmental involvement increases confidence. According to this, government should just provide the basic legal framework for eco-labelling and leave the rest to non-governmental organizations. However, the empirical underpinning of this recommendation is insufficient. This paper analyses consumer confidence in different organic food labelling regimes with varying degrees of governmental involvement. Using unique and detailed survey data from USA, United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden, the analysis shows that confidence is highest in countries with substantial state involvement. This suggests that governments can increase green consumerism through active and substantial involvement in eco-labelling

Consumer Confidence, News and Consumption Stimulation

In the Chinese urban data, there is a stronger relationship between consumer behavior (measured by consumption income ratio or cy ratio) and consumer confidence (measured by Consumer Confidence Index or CCI), which implies expectation about the future plays an important role in domestic demand. In our paper, a structural VAR method (based on Beaudry&Portier 2006 AER) is employed to identify the news shock about three markets including housing, education and medical care. We also extract the components in CCI about news shocks for those three sectors. After that, we conduct regression on cy ratio against those components extracted from CCI, and find that the expectation on housing accounts more importance in consumption, education takes a second place and medical care has little effect.News Driven Expectation; Chinese Consumption Behavior; Structural VAR