Consumer Behavior Around Salient Swedish Macroeconomic Announcements

Sammanfattning

This paper investigates whether Swedish household consumption changes around salient macroeconomic announcements. Using transaction-based data from Statistics Sweden from 2019 to 2026, we study SCB unem- ployment rate announcements and Riksbank interest rate announcements. We proxy salience with Google Trends search intensity for arbetslöshet (unemployment) and ränta (interest rate), with which we construct six- month salience maxima and estimate event-studies and regression mod- els. Pooled estimates show that both announcement types are associated with changes in consumption within ±14 day event windows. Direc- tional tests isolating the most salient announcements show that announce- ments indicating falling unemployment are associated with consumption response, whereas rising unemployment and interest rate announcements show weaker associations. By comparison, fundamentals-based maxima for unemployment announcements, following Garmaise, Levi, and Lustig (2024), are negatively associated with consumption response. Our findings suggest that Google Trends may capture more active information search around positive labor-market news than around monetary policy news, while unemployment-rate-based maxima may capture passively processed, severe labor-market news.