IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedker/y2002iqiinv.87no.2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumer confidence after September 11

Author

Listed:
  • C. Alan Garner

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • C. Alan Garner, 2002. "Consumer confidence after September 11," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 87(Q II).
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedker:y:2002:i:qii:n:v.87no.2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/1414/2002-Consumer%20Confidence%20After%20September%2011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicholas S. Souleles, 2001. "Consumer Sentiment: Its Rationality and Usefulness in Forecasting Expenditure - Evidence from the Michigan Micro Data," NBER Working Papers 8410, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Eric M. Leeper, 1992. "Consumer attitudes: king for a day," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, issue Jul, pages 1-15.
    3. 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.
    4. Dean Croushore & Tom Stark, 1999. "Does data vintage matter for forecasting?," Working Papers 99-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    5. Michael C. Lovell, 1975. "Why Was the Consumer Feeling So Sad?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 6(2), pages 473-479.
    6. Adrian W. Throop, 1992. "Consumer sentiment: its causes and effects," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 35-59.
    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. Camilo Alberto Cárdenas-Hurtado & María Alejandra Hernández-Montes, 2019. "Understanding the Consumer Confidence Index in Colombia: A structural FAVAR analysis," Borradores de Economia 1063, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    2. Kim, Jikyung (Jeanne) & Dong, Hang & Choi, Jeonghye & Chang, Sue Ryung, 2022. "Sentiment change and negative herding: Evidence from microblogging and news," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 364-376.
    3. Dudek, Sławomir, 2008. "Consumer Survey Data and short-term forecasting of households consumption expenditures in Poland," MPRA Paper 19818, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Bertrand Marc & Andreas Reuter, 2018. "The Effect of Elections on Consumer Confidence in Europe," European Economy - Discussion Papers 090, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    5. Timo Wollmershäuser & Wolfgang Nierhaus & Tim Oliver Berg & Christian Breuer & Johanna Garnitz & Christian Grimme & Atanas Hristov & Nikolay Hristov & Wolfgang Meister & Magnus Reif & Felix Schröter &, 2015. "Ifo Economic Forecast 2015/2017: Modest Upswing Continues," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 68(24), pages 23-66, December.
    6. Ito, Harumi & Lee, Darin, 2005. "Assessing the impact of the September 11 terrorist attacks on U.S. airline demand," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 75-95.
    7. Marco Malgarini & Patrizia Margani, 2005. "Psychology, consumer sentiment and household expenditures: a disaggregated analysis," ISAE Working Papers 58, ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics - (Rome, ITALY).
    8. James Sprigg & Mark Ehlen, 2007. "Comparative dynamics in an overlapping-generations model: the effects of quasi-rational discrete choice on finding and maintaining Nash equilibrium," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 29(1), pages 69-96, February.

    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. Brigitte Desroches & Marc-André Gosselin, 2002. "The Usefulness of Consumer Confidence Indexes in the United States," Staff Working Papers 02-22, Bank of Canada.
    2. Dion, David Pascal, 2006. "Does Consumer Confidence Forecast Household Spending? The Euro Area Case," MPRA Paper 911, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Roberto Golinelli & Giuseppe Parigi, 2003. "What is this thing called confidence? A comparative analysis of consumer confidence indices in eight major countries," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 484, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    4. 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.
    5. Pami Dua, 2008. "Analysis of Consumers’ Perceptions of Buying Conditions for Houses," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(4), pages 335-350, November.
    6. Dudek, Sławomir, 2008. "Consumer Survey Data and short-term forecasting of households consumption expenditures in Poland," MPRA Paper 19818, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Gikas Hardouvelis & Dimitrios Thomakos, 2007. "Consumer Confidence and Elections," Working Papers 0003, University of Peloponnese, Department of Economics.
    8. 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.
    9. Brigitte Desroches & Marc‐André Gosselin, 2004. "Evaluating Threshold Effects in Consumer Sentiment," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(4), pages 942-952, April.
    10. Qadan, Mahmoud & Nama, Hazar, 2018. "Investor sentiment and the price of oil," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 42-58.
    11. César Carrera & Miguel Puch, 2019. "Consumption dynamics and the expectation channel in a Small Open Economy," Working Papers 144, Peruvian Economic Association.
    12. Croushore, Dean, 2005. "Do consumer-confidence indexes help forecast consumer spending in real time?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 435-450, December.
    13. Kajal Lahiri & Yongchen Zhao, 2013. "Determinants of Consumer Sentiment: Evidence from Household Survey Data," Discussion Papers 13-12, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
    14. S. Heravi & J. Easaw & R. Golinelli, 2016. "Generalized State-Dependent Models: A Multivariate Approach," Working Papers wp1067, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    15. Qiao, Zhuo & McAleer, Michael & Wong, Wing-Keung, 2009. "Linear and nonlinear causality between changes in consumption and consumer attitudes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 102(3), pages 161-164, March.
    16. Batchelor, Roy & Dua, Pami, 1998. "Improving macro-economic forecasts: The role of consumer confidence," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-81, March.
    17. Sercin Sahin, 2021. "Consumer confidence, consumption, and macroeconomic fluctuations: A systemic stock‐flow consistent model," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(4), pages 868-904, November.
    18. Hashmat Khan & Jean-François Rouillard & Santosh Upadhayaya, 2019. "Consumer Confidence and Household Investment," Carleton Economic Papers 19-06, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 04 Jan 2024.
    19. 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.
    20. Hashmat Khan & Santosh Upadhayaya, 2020. "Does business confidence matter for investment?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1633-1665, October.

    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:fip:fedker:y:2002:i:qii:n:v.87no.2. 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: Zach Kastens (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbkcus.html .

    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.