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Consumer sentiment and household expenditure: reevaluating the forecasting equations

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Sydney Ludvigson

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Abstract

This paper reestimates the simple forecasting regressions in Carroll, Fuhrer, and Wilcox (1993) (CFW), which investigate the predictive power of consumer sentiment for consumption growth. Durability in the consumption categories analyzed implies that the error term may be distributed as an MA(1), indicating that ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation is inappropriate when variables lagged one period are used in the forecasting equation. I reestimate the forecasting regressions using nonlinear least squares (NLLS), explicitly accounting for a moving average error structure. In addition, I include two financial indicators as controls in the forecasting regression. These changes produce notable qualitative differences with the results obtained in CFW, and with my own results using OLS. In particular, using NLLS and financial controls, consumer attitudes appear to have little incremental forecasting power for categories of consumption other than motor vehicles.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its series Research Paper with number 9636.

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Date of creation: 1996
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fednrp:9636

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Related research
Keywords: Consumer behavior ; Consumption (Economics) ; Forecasting;

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Eric M. Leeper, 1992. "Consumer attitudes: king for a day," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, issue Jul, pages 1-15.
  2. 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. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Wilcox, David W, 1992. "The Construction of U.S. Consumption Data: Some Facts and Their Implications for Empirical Work," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 922-41, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Nicholas S. Souleles, . "Household Securities Purchases, Transactions Costs, and Hedging Motives," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 24-99, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research. [Downloadable!]
  2. 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. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Brigitte Desroches & Marc-André Gosselin, 2002. "The Usefulness of Consumer Confidence Indexes in the United States," Working Papers 02-22, Bank of Canada. [Downloadable!]
  4. Jason Bram & Sydney Ludvigson, 1997. "Does consumer confidence forecast household expenditure?: A sentiment index horse race," Research Paper 9708, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [Downloadable!]
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