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Abstract

Vol. 55, No. 2, pp. 171-184 (2004)

“Business Sentiment and Business Surveys -Are Questions Based on Levels and on Changes Answered Consistently?-”
Kazumi Asako (The Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University), Nobuyuki Harada (Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba)

This paper attempts to answer questions raised to the internal consistency of respondents in answering different business surveys. There are two types of business surveys in Japan. Some investigate business sentiment based on the level of economic activities while others investigate business sentiment based on the differences in the economic activities over time. Our analyses suggest that respondents are not necessarily aware of the differences in questions and answer them in the same way regardless of the types of business surveys.