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Turns in Consumer Confidence: An Information Advantage Linked to Manufacturing

This research shows that the manufacturing sector contains private information advantages for consumer confidence. It examines the consumer confidence--manufacturing link by comparing the U.S. national-level Index of Consumer Sentiment with identically constructed confidence indices from a key manufacturing state and a nonmanufacturing state. Granger causality analysis shows that the manufacturing state's confidence index leads the national index, whereas the nonmanufacturing state's confidence index lags it. Factors influencing confidence include percentage manufacturing employment, equity markets indicators, and disposable income. Fitting a consumption function to confidence measures for the three confidence indices shows the strongest relationship to be in the manufacturing state. (JEL D12) Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.