IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/euf/dispap/090.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of Elections on Consumer Confidence in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Bertrand Marc
  • Andreas Reuter

Abstract

In line with the growing prominence of consumer confidence as a leading indicator of economic activity, a body of literature has built up which aims to explain its drivers. While all studies seem to agree that consumer confidence can be partially explained by variables reflecting economic fundamentals, there is less agreement on the role played by potentially relevant, non-economic events. This paper focusses on the effect of elections. Considering that they occur regularly they pose a repetitive challenge to analysts and forecasters eager to distil the right signals from the data. In this article, we analyse the impact of elections on consumer confidence in a selection of EU Member States, using error correction models, which control for a variety of relevant background variables. Proxying consumer confidence by data from the Joint Harmonised EU Programme of Business and Consumer Surveys, our analysis allows for a high degree of cross-country comparability. The presented results show elections in Austria, France and Germany to have a significant, positive effect on consumers' expectations regarding the general economic situation. The estimated cumulative effect on the level of the indicator from the beginning of the election period to the actual election (or month thereafter) is far from negligible, close to 1.0 standard deviation of the level of the dependent variable. The time it takes for the effect to build up differs across countries, with results ranging between four and nine months. In Belgium, by contrast, the results of our analysis do not provide indications of any kind of election effect on consumer expectations.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:euf:dispap:090
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/effect-elections-consumer-confidence-europe_en
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Neil R. Ericsson & James G. MacKinnon, 2002. "Distributions of error correction tests for cointegration," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 5(2), pages 285-318, June.
    2. Suzanna De Boef & Paul M. Kellstedt, 2004. "The Political (and Economic) Origins of Consumer Confidence," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(4), pages 633-649, October.
    3. Becker, Gary S. & Rubinstein, Yona, 2011. "Fear and the response to terrorism: an economic analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121740, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Acemoglu, Daron & Scott, Andrew, 1994. "Consumer Confidence and Rational Expectations: Are Agents' Beliefs Consistent with the Theory?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(422), pages 1-19, January.
    5. Suzuki, Motoshi, 1992. "Political Business Cycles in the Public Mind," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(4), pages 989-996, December.
    6. C. Alan Garner, 2002. "Consumer confidence after September 11," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 87(Q II).
    7. Fuhrer, Jeffrey C, 1988. "On the Information Content of Consumer Survey Expectations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(1), pages 140-144, February.
    8. Ramalho, Esmeralda A. & Caleiro, António & Dionfsio, Andreia, 2011. "Explaining consumer confidence in Portugal," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 25-32, February.
    9. Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, 1993. "What role does consumer sentiment play in the U.S. macroeconomy?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Jan, pages 32-44.
    10. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    11. Vuchelen, Jef, 1995. "Political events and consumer confidence in Belgium," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 563-579, 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. Petar Soric & Mateo Zokalj & Marija Logarusic, 2020. "Economic determinants of Croatian consumer confidence: real estate prices vs. macroeconomy," Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems - scientific journal, Croatian Interdisciplinary Society Provider Homepage: http://indecs.eu, vol. 18(2B), pages 240-257.

    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. Dudek, Sławomir, 2008. "Consumer Survey Data and short-term forecasting of households consumption expenditures in Poland," MPRA Paper 19818, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. 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.
    3. Gikas Hardouvelis & Dimitrios Thomakos, 2007. "Consumer Confidence and Elections," Working Papers 0003, University of Peloponnese, Department of Economics.
    4. 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.
    5. Paradiso, Antonio & Kumar, Saten & Margani, Patrizia, 2014. "Are Italian consumer confidence adjustments asymmetric? A macroeconomic and psychological motives approach," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 48-63.
    6. 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).
    7. Hassan F. Gholipour & Reza Tajaddini & Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, 2023. "Governments’ economic support for households during the COVID-19 pandemic and consumer confidence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 65(3), pages 1253-1272, September.
    8. van Giesen, Roxanne I. & Pieters, Rik, 2019. "Climbing out of an economic crisis: A cycle of consumer sentiment and personal stress," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 109-124.
    9. António Bento Caleiro, 2021. "Learning to Classify the Consumer Confidence Indicator (in Portugal)," Economies, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, September.
    10. Vuchelen, Jef, 2004. "Consumer sentiment and macroeconomic forecasts," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 493-506, August.
    11. Ramalho, Esmeralda A. & Caleiro, António & Dionfsio, Andreia, 2011. "Explaining consumer confidence in Portugal," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 25-32, February.
    12. 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.
    13. Hollanders, David & Vliegenthart, Rens, 2011. "The influence of negative newspaper coverage on consumer confidence: The Dutch case," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 367-373, June.
    14. Brigitte Desroches & Marc-André Gosselin, 2002. "The Usefulness of Consumer Confidence Indexes in the United States," Staff Working Papers 02-22, Bank of Canada.
    15. 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.
    16. Konstantinou, Panagiotis & Tagkalakis, Athanasios, 2011. "Boosting confidence: Is there a role for fiscal policy?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 1629-1641, July.
    17. Giancarlo Bruno, 2014. "Consumer confidence and consumption forecast: a non-parametric approach," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 37-52, February.
    18. 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.
    19. Hollanders, D.A. & Vliegenthart, R., 2009. "The Influence of Negative Newspaper Coverage on Consumer Confidence : The Dutch Case," Other publications TiSEM fc1678e6-b3ab-4d80-8c87-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E71 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on the Macro Economy
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:euf:dispap:090. 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: ECFIN INFO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dg2ecbe.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.