The Predictive Power of the Index of Consumer Sentiment

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Abstract
The monthly release of the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan is featured in the financial press with much fanfare, especially during periods of economic uncertainty. Yet the conventional wisdom appears to be that although the index by itself has considerable predictive power, when used in conjunction with other readily available economic variables its marginal value is quite small. For example, Christopher Carroll, Jeffrey Fuhrer, and David Wilcox conclude that "consumer sentiment does indeed forecast future changes in household spending. . . . Further, sentiment likely has some (though probably not a great deal) of incremental predictive power relative to at least some other indicators for the growth of spending."1 On the other hand, John Matsusaka and Argia Sbordone find evidence of a qualitatively significant causal relationship between the ICS and GDP: they estimate that between 13 and 26 percent of variations in GDP can be attributed to variations in consumer sentiment.2

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