IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/acsxxx/v08y2005i02n03ns0219525905000452.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumer Behavior And Fluctuations In Economic Activity

Author

Listed:
  • FRANK H. WESTERHOFF

    (University of Osnabrück, Department of Economics, Rolandstraße 8, D-49069 Osnabrück, Germany)

Abstract

We develop a simple Keynesian type business cycle model in which heterogeneous agents are either optimistic or pessimistic. If the majority of the agents are optimistic, then consumption expenditures are high and the economy booms, otherwise consumption expenditures are low and the economy is in a recession. Within our model, the sentiment of the agents is affected by their social interactions. For instance, people regularly meet each other and thus their mood may change. Overall, our model suggests that swings in consumer confidence may generate irregular fluctuations in economic activity.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank H. Westerhoff, 2005. "Consumer Behavior And Fluctuations In Economic Activity," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(02n03), pages 209-215.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:08:y:2005:i:02n03:n:s0219525905000452
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219525905000452
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525905000452
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0219525905000452?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.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Frank Westerhoff & Martin Hohnisch, 2010. "Consumer sentiment and countercyclical fiscal policies," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 609-618.

    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:wsi:acsxxx:v:08:y:2005:i:02n03:n:s0219525905000452. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/acs/acs.shtml .

    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.