Which Survey Indicators Are Useful for Monitoring Consumption? Evidence fron European Countries

Niek Nahuis () and W. Jos Jansen ()

Macroeconomics from EconWPA

Abstract: This paper assesses the information content of two survey indicators for consumption developments in the near future for eight European countries in the period 1985-1998. Empirical work on this topic typically focuses on consumer confidence, the perceptions of buyers of consumption goods. This paper examines whether perceptions of sellers of consumption goods, measured by retail trade surveys, may also improve short-term monitoring of consumption. We find that both consumer confidence and retailer confidence embody valuable information, when analyzed in isolation. For France, Italy and Spain we conclude that adding retail confidence does not improve the indicator model once consumer confidence has been included. For the UK the reverse case is obtained. For the remaining four countries we show that combining consumer sentiment and retail trade confidence into a composite indicator leads to optimal results. Our results suggest that incorporating information from retail trade surveys may offer significant benefits for the analysis of short-term prospects of consumption.

Keywords: consumption; consumer confidence; retail trade confidence; composite indicators (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 E32 E37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-mac
Date: Written 2003-09-17
Note: Type of Document - PDF; prepared on PC; to print on HP, A4 paper; pages: 17 ; figures: none. Final version
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http://129.3.20.41/eps/mac/papers/0309/0309013.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Which survey indicators are useful for monitoring consumption? Evidence from European countries (2004)
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