Public and Private Measures of Consumer Confidence in Turkey: Substitutes or Complements?

Consumer confidence indexes are among the major economic variables as private consumption stands as the major component of aggregate demand in many economies. This is also relevant for an emerging economy like Turkey. “What determines consumer confidence?” is one of the most popular questions in the literature of consumer surveys. There are two consumer confidence indexes regularly released in Turkey. One is released by a private television channel CNBC-e in the first day of every month since January 2002. The other one is released by two public institutions Central Bank of Republic of Turkey and Turkish Statistical Institute, jointly since 2004. Although the goal is the same for both indexes, there are differences between the two indexes in terms of the methodology and sampling size. This study has two aims. One is to detect the degree of correlation between those indexes. This will allow to comment on the reliability of the indexes. The other one is to test the relation between the unemployment figures and the consumer confidence in Turkey by using both indexes.