But if the consumer is going to be saving more, rather than maintaining a borrow-and-spend attitude, it is very bullish for the market long term".
Then came the pseudo-hipsters, with money to spend and attitude to burn.
In one series of papers, she and various coauthors study the impact of female political leadership on local government spending and attitudes toward women by examining a policy that required one-third of India's villages, selected at random in each election cycle, to choose a woman as council head.
I think it changed women's attitudes to spending money on these things.
Culture obviously affects people's attitudes toward spending and saving, and there's no reason to think that the Chinese will ever be as profligate as Americans are (nor would that be a good thing).
After getting more than 10,000 responses from Lab readers on their attitudes toward spending money, a team of behavioral economists has published the results in The Journal of Consumer Research.
In its new report on Christmas shopping, Verdict Research charts the changing consumer attitudes to spending since 2000, from the "careless shopper" who paid little but bought lots to the "considered shopper" in the late 2000s to today's "careful shopper", who pays high prices for fewer goods.
In a year when consumer spending has been the main bulwark of the faltering economy, the consumer attitude about spending the tax refunds on this year's income taxes is significant, especially in light of the World Trade Center attacks.
Jason Dempsey, an Army officer and a former White House fellow, found from his research that "there is no monolithic 'military vote.'" He found that "on most social issues and questions of how the government should spend money, the attitudes of service members largely tracked those of the civilian population".
