Psychology, consumer sentiment and household expenditures: a disaggregated analysis

Marco Malgarini () and Patrizia Margani

No 58, ISAE Working Papers from ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics - (Rome, ITALY)

Abstract: The aim of the paper 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 working condition of the household. Consumption data are disaggregated according to durability. The role of sentiment results to be stronger for service expenditures. Psychological motives of employees are found to have a particularly significant influence on consumption decisions. Moreover, CSI can not be explained by economic fundamentals alone, capturing also the effects of the political cycle and exceptional circumstances.

Keywords: Consumer sentiment; Permanent Income hypothesis; excess sensitivity; psychological approach; heterogeneity of individuals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2005-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://lipari.istat.it/digibib/Working_Papers/WP_58_2005_Malgarini_Margani.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Working Paper: Psychology, consumer sentiment and household expenditures: a disaggregated analysis (2005)
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:isa:wpaper:58

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISAE Working Papers from ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics - (Rome, ITALY) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stefania Rossetti ().