IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dpr/wpaper/1135r.html

What Is Consumer Confidence?

Author

Listed:
  • Jean-Paul L’Huillier
  • Robert Waldmann
  • Donghoon Yoo

Abstract

This paper offers a structural interpretation of survey measures of consumer confidence. To this end, we consider a simple consumption model with noisy information about fundamentals and estimate a model-based measure of consumer confidence using national accounts. We show that the model-implied measure corresponds well to fluctuations in confidence survey data for the U.S. and a host of European countries. Our analysis provides an informational mechanism to conceptualize and interpret these widely used confidence indices.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-Paul L’Huillier & Robert Waldmann & Donghoon Yoo, 2021. "What Is Consumer Confidence?," ISER Discussion Paper 1135r, Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka, revised Dec 2022.
    • Handle: RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1135r
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.osaka-u.ac.jp/static/resources/docs/dp/2021/DP1135R.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephanie Schmitt‐Grohé & Martín Uribe, 2012. "What's News in Business Cycles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(6), pages 2733-2764, November.
    2. Olivier J. Blanchard & Jean-Paul L'Huillier & Guido Lorenzoni, 2013. "News, Noise, and Fluctuations: An Empirical Exploration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(7), pages 3045-3070, December.
    3. L’Huillier, Jean-Paul & Yoo, Donghoon, 2017. "Bad news in the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and other U.S. recessions: A comparative study," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 79-98.
    4. Emine Boz & Christian Daude & Bora Durdu, 2008. "Emerging market business cycles revisited: learning about the trend," International Finance Discussion Papers 927, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Emine Boz & C. Bora Durdu & Nan Li, 2015. "Emerging Market Business Cycles: The Role of Labor Market Frictions," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(1), pages 31-72, February.
    6. Jean‐Paul L'Huillier & Donghoon Yoo, 2019. "Where is the GE? Consumption Dynamics in DSGEs," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(6), pages 1491-1502, September.
    7. Ryan Chahrour & Kyle Jurado, 2018. "News or Noise? The Missing Link," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1702-1736, July.
    8. Yoo, Donghoon, 2019. "Ambiguous information, permanent income, and consumption fluctuations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 79-96.
    9. George‐Marios Angeletos & Fabrice Collard & Harris Dellas, 2018. "Quantifying Confidence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1689-1726, September.
    10. Boz, Emine & Daude, Christian & Bora Durdu, C., 2011. "Emerging market business cycles: Learning about the trend," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 616-631.
    11. 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.
    12. E. Philip Howrey, 2001. "The Predictive Power of the Index of Consumer Sentiment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 32(1), pages 175-216.
    13. Robert B. Barsky & Eric R. Sims, 2012. "Information, Animal Spirits, and the Meaning of Innovations in Consumer Confidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1343-1377, June.
    14. Michael Rousakis, 2013. "Expectations and Fluctuations: The Role of Monetary Policy," 2013 Meeting Papers 681, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Cosmin L. Ilut & Martin Schneider, 2014. "Ambiguous Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2368-2399, August.
    16. Paul Beaudry & Franck Portier, 2006. "Stock Prices, News, and Economic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1293-1307, September.
    17. Cao, Dan & L’Huillier, Jean-Paul, 2018. "Technological revolutions and the Three Great Slumps: A medium-run analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 93-108.
    18. Guido Lorenzoni, 2009. "A Theory of Demand Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2050-2084, December.
    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. Montone, Maurizio & Zhu, Yuhao & Zwinkels, Remco C.J., 2024. "Managerial sentiment and employment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    2. Benjamin Baker & Murat Üngör, 2025. "Effects of Quantitative Easing on Economic Sentiment: Evidence from Three Large Economies," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 67(1), pages 50-83, March.

    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. Jean-Paul L’Huillier & Robert Waldmann & Donghoon Yoo, 2021. "Confidence, Fundamentals, and Consumption," ISER Discussion Paper 1135, Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka.
    2. Yoo, Donghoon, 2019. "Ambiguous information, permanent income, and consumption fluctuations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 79-96.
    3. Adams, Jonathan J., 2023. "Moderating noise-driven macroeconomic fluctuations under dispersed information," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    4. Saccal, Alessandro, 2021. "Confidence and economic activity in Europe," MPRA Paper 108812, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Ashima Goyal & Abhishek Kumar, 2022. "News, noise, and Indian business cycle," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(2), pages 503-538, April.
    6. Corrado, Luisa & Silgado-Gómez, Edgar & Yoo, Donghoon & Waldmann, Robert, 2022. "Ambiguous economic news and heterogeneity: What explains asymmetric consumption responses?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    7. Dées, Stephane & Zimic, Srečko, 2019. "Animal spirits, fundamental factors and business cycle fluctuations," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-1.
    8. Paul Beaudry & Franck Portier, 2014. "News-Driven Business Cycles: Insights and Challenges," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(4), pages 993-1074, December.
    9. Laura Nowzohour & Livio Stracca, 2020. "More Than A Feeling: Confidence, Uncertainty, And Macroeconomic Fluctuations," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 691-726, September.
    10. Saccal, Alessandro, 2023. "A role for confidence: volition regimes and news," MPRA Paper 117484, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Ryan Chahrour & Kyle Jurado, 2018. "News or Noise? The Missing Link," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1702-1736, July.
    12. Große Steffen, Christoph, 2015. "Uncertainty shocks and non-fundamental debt crises: An ambiguity approach," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112936, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    13. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    14. Flemming, Jean & L'Huillier, Jean-Paul & Piguillem, Facundo, 2019. "Macro-prudential taxation in good times," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    15. Di Bella, Gabriel & Grigoli, Francesco, 2019. "Optimism, pessimism, and short-term fluctuations," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 79-96.
    16. Nadav Ben Zeev, 2019. "Is There A Single Shock That Drives The Majority Of Business Cycle Fluctuations?," Working Papers 1906, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    17. Thales A. J. T. T. Maion & Marcio Issao Nakane, 2019. "News shocks and consumer expectations: evidence for Brazil," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2019_11, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    18. L’Huillier, Jean-Paul & Yoo, Donghoon, 2017. "Bad news in the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and other U.S. recessions: A comparative study," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 79-98.
    19. Hirose, Yasuo & Kurozumi, Takushi, 2021. "Identifying News Shocks With Forecast Data," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(6), pages 1442-1471, September.
    20. D’Amico, Stefania & King, Thomas B., 2023. "What does anticipated monetary policy do?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 123-139.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E66 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General Outlook and Conditions

    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:dpr:wpaper:1135r. 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: Librarian (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isosujp.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.