IDENTIFYING THE INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN
CONSUMER CONFIDENCE AND MACROECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENTS IN CROATIA

Marina Matošec1 and
Zdenka Obuljen Zoričić2

1University of Zagreb - Faculty of Economics and Business
  Zagreb, Croatia
2University of Dubrovnik - Department of Economics and Business Economics
  Dubrovnik, Croatia

INDECS 17(2-B), 345-354, 2019
DOI 10.7906/indecs.17.2.10
Full text available here.
 

Received: 11th February 2019.
Accepted: 22nd May 2019.
Regular article

ABSTRACT

This article represents an empirical attempt to discern the interrelationship between consumer confidence and macroeconomic trends in Croatia. Previous studies that employ both subjective and objective variables show that consumer confidence, consumption and gross domestic product in other countries are interdependent to a great extent. Apart from the mentioned variables, our study additionally includes savings, as another important determinant in the households' economic decision making. The results indicate that consumer confidence Granger-causes all selected macroeconomic variables and vice versa. Not surprisingly, there are also many significant interrelations between the macroeconomic variables. These findings confirm the predictive ability of consumer confidence in Croatia and suggest that combining subjective and objective indicators has an important role in understanding households' economic behaviour.

KEY WORDS
consumer confidence, consumption, savings, GDP, Granger causality

CLASSIFICATION
JEL:C51, E21, E71


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