Psychology, consumer sentiment and household expenditures

Marco Malgarini () and Patrizia Margani

Applied Economics, 2007, vol. 39, issue 13, 1719-1729

Abstract: The aim of this article is to assess the role of the Italian Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI) as an autonomous driving force of consumption decisions. We test for the presence of 'rule of thumb' consumers as originally proposed by Campbell and Mankiw (1991), using sentiment measures distinguished by respondent's working condition and consumption data disaggregated according to durability, over the period 1982-2004. The consumption-sentiment relationship is found to be stronger for some groups of households and for some particular categories of expenditures. Moreover, sentiment seems to be not well explained by economic fundamentals alone, capturing also the effects of the political cycle and exceptional circumstances.

Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840600606351 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:39:y:2007:i:13:p:1719-1729

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036840600606351

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().