The determinants of consumer confidence: the case of the United States and Belgium

The paper is dealing with the controversial question of the potential impact of stock market fluctuations on consumer confidence. In the last few years, this confidence index has gained importance in business cycle analysis and empirical evidence has shown its explanatory power in forecasting consumption along with standard macroeconomic variables. Meanwhile, numerous interpretations of its fluctuations arose, and few were based on a solid argumentation. Therefore, we propose in this paper to determine which elements are actually driving the confidence index. Using the standard error-correctio... Mehr ...