sentiment (considering both confidence and uncertainty) and economic activity. Second, we review existing empirical measures of … sentiment, in particular consumer confidence, stock market volatility (SMV) and Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), on monthly … across countries, suggesting the existence of a global factor. Consumer confidence has the closest co-movement with economic …

identify the causal effects of confidence shocks on real economic activity in a selection of advanced economies. Starting from … consumption and real GDP. In line with BNW, we find that confidence shocks explain a large share of the variance in real economic … common global components in international confidence cycles, we extend the analysis to a FAVAR model. This approach proves …

respective mean and diversity of views was only observed in the case of Sweden when including the financial crisis episode. A …

Why is GDP so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones? To answer this question, we propose a theory of …