78 – Applications in Business and Economics
Measuring the Economic Sentiments Using Ordinary Response Options
Inho Park
Pukyong National University
Two predominant consumer sentiment indexes in the U.S., the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) and the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), are often compared for their predictive power on consumer spending and/or other macroeconomic impacts. However, relatively little attention has been made among the literature to their structural differences due to micro scoring schemes but mostly more to other distinctive details in survey questionnares and/or methodology. In this paper, we discuss some of their fundamental differences in statistical properties that should be awared of when applying these indexes to economic comparison studies.
