SUMMARYWe study the role of consumer confidence in forecasting real personal consumption expenditure, and contribute to the extant literature in three substantive ways. First, we re-examine existing empirical models of consumption and consumer confidence, not only at the quarterly frequency, but using monthly data as well. Second, we employ real-time data in addition to commonly used revised vintages. Third, we investigate the role of consumer confidence in a rich information context. We produce forecasts of consumption expenditures with and without consumer confidence measures using a dynamic factor model and a large, real-time, jagged-edge dataset. In a robust way, we establish the important role of confidence surveys in improving the accuracy of consumption forecasts, manifesting primarily through the services component. During the recession of 2007-2009, sentiment is found to have a more pervasive effect on all components of aggregate consumption: durables, non-durables and services.

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We study the information content of the University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment as well as its five components. Using household data from the Surveys of Consumers, we identify the main determinants of these indicators and document their varying role over the business cycle. Our results suggest that while at the aggregate level, macroeconomic conditions explain sentiment well, important and additional information is contained at the level of households. We compare the role of objective and subjective information in determining household level sentiment, and show that significant heterogeneity in the absorption of news from local network sources is a major feature of consumer sentiment. The differential interpretation of current macroeconomic conditions is found to be more pervasive in periods of falling sentiment that typically predates business cycle peaks, and thus helps sentiment to foreshadow recessions.

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A series of azobenzene-tethered polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) derivatives, i.e. monoazobenzene-substituted POSS (MonoAzo-POSS), bisazobenzene-substituted POSS (BisAzo-POSS) and triazobenzene-substituted POSS (TriAzo-POSS), were synthesized through the amidation acidylation of aminopropylisobutyl POSS and benzoic acid derivatives (AzoMs) with one, two and three azobenzene groups (AzoM1, AzoM2 and AzoM3). Their structures were characterized by FT-IR, 1 H NMR, 13 C NMR and mass spectra, and their thermal stability and photoresponsive behaviors in DMF solutions were evaluated with TGA, XRD and UV-vis spectra, respectively. The results indicated that the thermal stability and photoisomerization of azobenzenes could be effectively controlled by their molecular structure. In MonoAzo-POSS, the large steric hindrance of POSS destroys the molecular ordering and limits the molecular packing, contributing to its poor thermal stability. And the low molecular ordering of MonoAzo-POSS offers an azo group with large free space, and its trans-cis photoisomerization rate increases accordingly. But, in BisAzo-POSS and TriAzo-POSS, the incorporation of POSS units does not impact on the regularity of azobenzenes obviously, and the hindrance effect of nanosize POSS on the molecular motion plays a primary role in increasing their high thermal stability. Their photoisomerization rates decrease due to the steric hindrance of POSS and the unfolding structure of the azo moieties in BisAzo-POSS and TriAzo-POSS.