Consumer Attitudes and Their Forecasting Power for Consumer Spending
用密歇根大学消费者调查的主成分提取消费者态度信息，发现其能预测总消费行为，并改善专业预测者、蓝筹共识和美联储的预测。
The University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers is summarized with principal components of consumer attitudes with respect to income and wealth, prices, and interest rates and credit availability. These summary measures contain information beyond that captured by the Index of Consumer Sentiment. The summary measures have forecasting power for aggregate consumption behavior, even when controlling for economic fundamentals. These measures also help to improve significantly upon Survey of Professional Forecasters, Blue Chip Consensus, and Federal Reserve Board's forecasts of consumption and other real activity measures, consistent with their predictive ability conditioned upon a broader set of fundamentals and forecasters’ judgment.