Consumer Confidence and Yield Spreads in Europe

This paper shows the extraordinary capacity of yield spreads to anticipate consumption growth as proxy by the Economic Sentiment Indicator elaborated by the European Commission in order to predict turning points in business cycles. This new evidence complements the well known results regarding the usefulness of the slope of the term structure of interest rates to predict real economic conditions and, in particular, recessions by using a direct measure of expectations. A linear combination of European yield spreads explains a surprising 93.7% of the variability of the Economic Sentiment Indicator. Yield spreads seem to be a key determinant of consumer confidence in Europe.

Confianza del consumidor en la compra a través de Internet: una propuesta de modelización basada en la jerarquía de aprendizaje estándar

[ES] Este trabajo se encuadra dentro de los estudios centrados en el análisis del comportamiento de compra del consumidor en Internet. Nos centramos en la adaptación del modelo de la jerarquía de efectos basado en su variante de la jerarquía estándar de aprendizaje para proponer teóricamente un modelo conceptual que explica cómo las creencias —i.e. diseño, velocidad de interacción, beneficios sociales y privacidad— y actitudes del consumidor hacia Internet, como medio de comunicación, pueden considerarse como determinantes plausibles de la confianza en la compra online. Asimismo, en nuestro modelo se plantea que las opiniones del consumidor respecto a la compra a distancia también deben ejercer una influencia sobre sus valoraciones de Internet, como medio de comunicación y, especialmente, de compra.

La elección de la marca del distribuidor en productos duraderos: factores de influencia

[ES] La apuesta de la distribución por la extensión de su marca a las categorías de productos duraderos, como electrodomésticos y productos electrónicos para el hogar, ha demostrado ser acertada, a pesar de las críticas en contra de esta estrategia. Posiblemente, la mayor familiaridad del consumidor con las marcas del distribuidor, el cambio de actitud favorable hacia éstas, la disponibilidad de la tecnología, y por qué no, la crisis económica internacional que afecta a las economías domésticas, pueden ser factores explicativos de este éxito.

Consumer Expertise or Credit Risk? An empirical analysis of mortgage pricing

Loan mortgage interest rates are usually the result of a bank-customer negotiation process. Credit risk, consumer cross-buying potential, bundling, financial market competition and other features affecting the bargaining power of the parties could affect price. We argue that, since mortgage loan is a complex product, consumer expertise could be a relevant factor for mortgage pricing. Using data on mortgage loan prices for a sample of 1055 households for the year 2005 (Bank of Spain Survey of Household Finances, EFF-2005), and including credit risk, costs, potential capacity of the consumer to generate future business and bank competition variables, the regression results indicate that consumer expertise-related metrics are highly significant as predictors of mortgage loan prices. Other factors such as credit risk and consumer cross-buying potential do not have such a significant impact on mortgage prices. Our empirical results are affected by the credit conditions prior to the financial crisis and could shed some light on this issue.

Proficiency, Attitude and Conventions in Minority Languages

In this paper we study a simple mathematical model of a bilingual community in which all agents are f luent in the majority language but only a fraction of the population has some degree of pro ficiency in the minority language. We investigate how different distributions of pro ficiency, combined with the speaker´attitudes towards or against the minority language, may infl uence its use in pair conversations.