IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jbuscr/v17y2021i1d10.1007_s41549-021-00053-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Growth in US Durables Spending: Assessing the Impact of Consumer Ability and Willingness to Buy

Author

Listed:
  • Hamid Baghestani

    (American University of Sharjah)

  • Sehar Fatima

    (American University of Sharjah)

Abstract

This study makes use of two sets of variables in order to explain the behavior of growth in US consumer durables spending. The first set includes income and wealth growth as the determinants of consumer “ability to buy” in addition to changes in real interest rates. The second set includes detailed consumer durables-buying attitudes as the determinants of consumer “willingness to buy.” Our estimation results for 1988–2019 reveal that income and wealth growth in addition to changes in real interest rates significantly explain durables spending growth. Attitudinal factors that significantly explain durables spending growth include the difference of opinion of consumers as to whether prices are low or high, whether interest rates are low or high in addition to the difference of opinion of consumers regarding prosperous times versus uncertain future. Such evidence highlights the importance of detailed consumer durables-buying attitudes and offers insightful policy implications for stabilizing growth in durables spending.

Suggested Citation

  • Hamid Baghestani & Sehar Fatima, 2021. "Growth in US Durables Spending: Assessing the Impact of Consumer Ability and Willingness to Buy," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 17(1), pages 55-69, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jbuscr:v:17:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s41549-021-00053-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s41549-021-00053-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41549-021-00053-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s41549-021-00053-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher & Jakob De Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2008. "Central Bank Communication and Monetary Policy: A Survey of Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(4), pages 910-945, December.
    2. Stephane Dees & Pedro Soares Brinca, 2013. "Consumer confidence as a predictor of consumption spending: Evidence for the United States and the Euro area," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 134, pages 1-14.
    3. Daniel J. Lewis & Christos Makridis & Karel Mertens, 2019. "Do Monetary Policy Announcements Shift Household Expectations?," Staff Reports 897, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    4. Matsusaka, John G & Sbordone, Argia M, 1995. "Consumer Confidence and Economic Fluctuations," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(2), pages 296-318, April.
    5. Sydney C. Ludvigson, 2004. "Consumer Confidence and Consumer Spending," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 29-50, Spring.
    6. Soren T. Anderson & Ryan Kellogg & James M. Sallee & Richard T. Curtin, 2011. "Forecasting Gasoline Prices Using Consumer Surveys," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 110-114, May.
    7. Sterk, Vincent & Tenreyro, Silvana, 2018. "The transmission of monetary policy through redistributions and durable purchases," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 124-137.
    8. Garner, C. Alan, 1981. "Economic determinants of consumer sentiment," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 205-220, June.
    9. Ali Al‐Eyd & Ray Barrell & E. Philip Davis, 2009. "Consumer Confidence Indices And Short‐Term Forecasting Of Consumption," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 77(1), pages 96-111, January.
    10. Kryvtsov, Oleksiy & Petersen, Luba, 2021. "Central bank communication that works: Lessons from lab experiments," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 760-780.
    11. Michael Woodford, 2001. "Monetary policy in the information economy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 297-370.
    12. Easaw, Joshy Z. & Garratt, Dean & Heravi, Saeed M., 2005. "Does consumer sentiment accurately forecast UK household consumption? Are there any comparisons to be made with the US?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 517-532, September.
    13. C. Alan Garner, 1991. "Forecasting consumer spending: should economists pay attention to consumer confidence surveys?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 76(May), pages 57-71.
    14. Carroll, Christopher D & Fuhrer, Jeffrey C & Wilcox, David W, 1994. "Does Consumer Sentiment Forecast Household Spending? If So, Why?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1397-1408, December.
    15. Jason Bram & Sydney C. Ludvigson, 1998. "Does consumer confidence forecast household expenditure? a sentiment index horse race," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 4(Jun), pages 59-78.
    16. Hamid Baghestani, 2014. "On the loss structure of federal reserve forecasts of output growth," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 38(3), pages 518-527, July.
    17. Hamid Baghestani & Samer Kherfi, 2015. "An error-correction modeling of US consumer spending: are there asymmetries?," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 42(6), pages 1078-1094, November.
    18. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert & Wei, Min, 2007. "Do macro variables, asset markets, or surveys forecast inflation better?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1163-1212, May.
    19. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher & Jakob De Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2008. "Central Bank Communication and Monetary Policy: A Survey of Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(4), pages 910-945, December.
    20. Kajal Lahiri & George Monokroussos & Yongchen Zhao, 2016. "Forecasting Consumption: the Role of Consumer Confidence in Real Time with many Predictors," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(7), pages 1254-1275, November.
    21. Susan Black & Tom Cusbert, 2010. "Durable Goods and the Business Cycle," RBA Bulletin (Print copy discontinued), Reserve Bank of Australia, pages 11-18, September.
    22. Yasuo Hirose & Takushi Kurozumi, 2017. "Changes in the Federal Reserve Communication Strategy: A Structural Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(1), pages 171-185, February.
    23. Helge Berger & Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher, 2011. "Monetary Policy in the Media," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(4), pages 689-709, June.
    24. Erceg, Christopher & Levin, Andrew, 2006. "Optimal monetary policy with durable consumption goods," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1341-1359, October.
    25. Baghestani, Hamid, 2015. "Predicting gasoline prices using Michigan survey data," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 27-32.
    26. Hamid Baghestani & Ajalavat Viriyavipart, 2019. "Do factors influencing consumer home-buying attitudes explain output growth?," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 46(5), pages 1104-1115, August.
    27. Souleles, Nicholas S, 2004. "Expectations, Heterogeneous Forecast Errors, and Consumption: Micro Evidence from the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Surveys," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(1), pages 39-72, February.
    28. Hamid Baghestani, 2017. "Do US consumer survey data help beat the random walk in forecasting mortgage rates?," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 1343017-134, January.
    29. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1995. "Inside the Black Box: The Credit Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 27-48, Fall.
    30. Mankiw, N Gregory, 1985. "Consumer Durables and the Real Interest Rate," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(3), pages 353-362, August.
    31. Baghestani, Hamid, 2016. "Do gasoline prices asymmetrically affect US consumers’ economic outlook?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 247-252.
    32. repec:cii:cepiei:2013-q2-134-1 is not listed on IDEAS
    33. Hamid Baghestani & Polly Palmer, 2017. "On the dynamics of U.S. consumer sentiment and economic policy assessment," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(3), pages 227-237, January.
    34. John Shea, 1997. "Instrument Relevance in Multivariate Linear Models: A Simple Measure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(2), pages 348-352, May.
    35. repec:pri:cepsud:161blinder is not listed on IDEAS
    36. Lyziak, Tomasz & Mackiewicz, Joanna & Stanislawska, Ewa, 2007. "Central bank transparency and credibility: The case of Poland, 1998-2004," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 67-87, March.
    37. Michelle L. Barnes & Giovanni P. Olivei, 2017. "Consumer Attitudes and Their Forecasting Power for Consumer Spending," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(5), pages 1031-1058, August.
    38. Hamid Baghestani & Mohamed Soliman, 2009. "Federal Reserve vs. consumer forecasts of inflation: 1979-1983," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(15), pages 1565-1568.
    39. Grieves, Robin, 1983. "The Demand for Consumer Durables," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 15(3), pages 316-326, August.
    40. Michael J. Hamburger, 1967. "Interest rates and the demand for consumer durable goods," Staff Studies 41, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    41. Dräger, Lena & Lamla, Michael J. & Pfajfar, Damjan, 2016. "Are survey expectations theory-consistent? The role of central bank communication and news," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 84-111.
    42. Sinclair Davidson & Ashton de Silva, 2013. "Stimulating Savings: An Analysis of Cash Handouts in Australia and the United States," Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 20(2), pages 39-60.
    43. Carola Binder, 2018. "Interest Rate Prominence In Consumer Decision‐Making," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(2), pages 875-894, April.
    44. Hassan Gholipour Fereidouni & Reza Tajaddini, 2017. "Housing Wealth, Financial Wealth and Consumption Expenditure: The Role of Consumer Confidence," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 216-236, February.
    45. Batchelor, Roy & Dua, Pami, 1992. "Survey Expectations in the Time Series Consumption Function," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(4), pages 598-606, November.
    46. Michael Lemmon & Evgenia Portniaguina, 2006. "Consumer Confidence and Asset Prices: Some Empirical Evidence," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(4), pages 1499-1529.
    47. Mishkin, Frederic S, 1976. "Illiquidity, Consumer Durable Expenditure, and Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(4), pages 642-654, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hamid Baghestani, 2022. "Mortgage rate predictability and consumer home-buying assessments," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 46(3), pages 593-603, July.
    2. Richard T. Curtin, 2022. "A New Theory of Expectations," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 18(3), pages 239-259, November.
    3. Petar Sorić, 2022. "Ability to consume versus willingness to consume: the role of nonlinearities," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 663-689, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baghestani, Hamid, 2021. "Predicting growth in US durables spending using consumer durables-buying attitudes," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 327-336.
    2. Sudeshna Ghosh, 2021. "Consumer Confidence and Consumer Spending in Brazil: A Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model Analysis," Arthaniti: Journal of Economic Theory and Practice, , vol. 20(1), pages 53-85, June.
    3. Erik Kole & Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens & Bas Vringer, 2019. "Cognitive Biases and Consumer Sentiment," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-031/I, Tinbergen Institute, revised 21 Mar 2023.
    4. Aneta Maria Kłopocka, 2017. "Does Consumer Confidence Forecast Household Saving and Borrowing Behavior? Evidence for Poland," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(2), pages 693-717, September.
    5. Ivana Lolić & Marija Logarušić & Mirjana Čižmešija, 2022. "Recent Revision of the European Consumer Confidence Indicator: Is There any additional Space for Improvement?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 845-863, February.
    6. Kajal Lahiri & Yongchen Zhao, 2016. "Determinants of Consumer Sentiment Over Business Cycles: Evidence from the US Surveys of Consumers," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 12(2), pages 187-215, December.
    7. Aneta M. Klopocka & Rumiana Gorska, 2021. "Forecasting Household Saving Rate with Consumer Confidence Indicator and its Components: Panel Data Analysis of 14 European Countries," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(3), pages 874-898.
    8. Eleni Zafeiriou & Constantinos Katrakilidis & Chrysanthi Pegiou, 2019. "Consumer Confidence on Heating Oil Prices: An Empirical Study of their Relationship for European Union in a Nonlinear Framework," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(1), pages 63-90.
    9. Martin Geiger & Johann Scharler, 2021. "How Do People Interpret Macroeconomic Shocks? Evidence from U.S. Survey Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(4), pages 813-843, June.
    10. Marina Matosec & Zdenka Obuljen Zoricic, 2019. "Identifying the Interdependence between Consumer Confidence and Macroeconomic Developments in Croatia," Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems - scientific journal, Croatian Interdisciplinary Society Provider Homepage: http://indecs.eu, vol. 17(2-B), pages 345-354.
    11. Ahmed, Huson Joher Ali & Azad, A.S.M. Sohel & Poon, Wai Ching & Safiullah, Md, 2023. "Is there a CSI-leverage nexus?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    12. Marie‐Helene Gagnon & Celine Gimet, 2020. "Unconventional economic policies and sentiment: An international assessment," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(6), pages 1544-1591, June.
    13. Hamid Baghestani, 2017. "Do US consumer survey data help beat the random walk in forecasting mortgage rates?," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 1343017-134, January.
    14. Dudek, Sławomir, 2008. "Consumer Survey Data and short-term forecasting of households consumption expenditures in Poland," MPRA Paper 19818, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Antonello D Agostino & Caterina Mendicino & Caterina Mendicino, 2015. "Can consumer confidence provide independent information on consumption spending?," Working Papers 2, European Stability Mechanism.
    16. Acuña, Guillermo, 2017. "Evaluación de la capacidad predictiva del índice de percepción del consumidor [Assessing the predictive power of the consumer perception index]," MPRA Paper 83154, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Patrick Hirsch & Lars P. Feld & Ekkehard A. Köhler, 2023. "Breaking Monetary Policy News: The Role of Mass Media Coverage of ECB Announcements for Public Inflation Expectations," CESifo Working Paper Series 10285, CESifo.
    18. Ma, Chao, 2020. "Momentum and Reversion to Fundamentals: Are They Captured by Subjective Expectations of House Prices?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    19. Hatice Gökçe Karasoy Can & Çağlar Yüncüler, 2018. "The Explanatory Power and the Forecast Performance of Consumer Confidence Indices for Private Consumption Growth in Turkey," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(9), pages 2136-2152, July.
    20. Delis, Manthos D. & Kouretas, Georgios P. & Tsoumas, Chris, 2014. "Anxious periods and bank lending," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 1-13.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumption; Durables; Attitudinal data; Surveys of consumers; Monetary policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jbuscr:v:17:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s41549-021-00053-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.