To provide an empirical basis for the study of expectations, we have undertaken survey research measuring in probabilistic terms the beliefs that Americans hold about equity returns in the year ahead. This paper presents new findings on the expected returns reported in the 2004 Health and...

Research on consumer confidence has mainly sought to evaluate the power of available data to predict economic outcomes. In contrast, this article considers how best to measure consumer confidence. We analyze the responses to eight questions that have appeared recently on the Michigan Survey of...

We report here on the design and first application of an interactive computer-assisted self-administered interview (CASI) survey eliciting from high school students and college undergraduates their expectations of the income they would earn if they were to complete different levels of schooling....

We argue that comprehensive out-of-sample (OOS) evaluation using statistical decision theory (SDT) should replace the current practice of K-fold and Common Task Framework validation in machine learning (ML) research. SDT provides a formal framework for performing comprehensive OOS evaluation...

The potential impact of nonresponse on election polls is well known and frequently acknowledged. Yet measurement and reporting of polling error has focused solely on sampling error, represented by the margin of error of a poll. Survey statisticians have long recommended measurement of the total...

The Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) and other indices of consumer confidence are prominent in public discourse on the economy but have little presence in modern economic research. The sparsity of modern research follows an earlier period when economists scrutinized in some depth the...

We have collected data on the one-year-ahead income expectations of members of American households in our Survey of Economic Expectations (SEE), a module of a national continuous telephone survey conducted at the University of Wisconsin. The income-expectations questions take this form: `What do...