European Consumer Confidence Indicator (CCI) is conceptualized as a measure of prevailing consumer sentiment and a coincident indicator of private consumption. At the beginning of 2019, the European Commission (EC) changed the CCI’s methodology after more than 18 years of use, opening room for an evaluation. We construct an extensive set of more than 86 million alternatives to European CCI and provide detailed performance analysis focusing on correlations, residuals’ descriptive diagnostics, and success in tracking consumption’s direction of change. We propose inspecting the contribution of all survey questions (both 12 monthly and 3 quarterly), alternative monthly to quarterly transformations, alternative approaches to standardization, and allowing survey balances to enter the computation formula both with a positive and a negative sign. Almost all results imply that EC’s methodological change to new official CCI relies on stronger theoretical foundations and enhances the predictive power of CCI. The correlations with private consumption are higher than before while the success rate in tracking the direction of change is similar as before. However, the new CCI can be even more precise in capturing the direction of change up to 20–30%. Correlation values imply a possible improvement of up to 9% from the new CCI and suggest guidelines for further improvements. Expected spending on durable goods is the most relevant survey question for constructing CCI.

欧洲消费者信心指数 (CCI) 被概念化为衡量普遍消费者情绪的指标和私人消费的同步指标。2019 年初，欧盟委员会 (EC) 在使用了 18 多年后改变了 CCI 的方法，为评估打开了空间。我们构建了超过 8600 万个欧洲 CCI 替代方案的广泛集合，并提供详细的性能分析，重点关注相关性、残差的描述性诊断以及跟踪消费变化方向的成功。我们建议检查所有调查问题的贡献（12 个月和 3 季度），替代每月到季度的转换，标准化的替代方法，并允许调查余额以正号和负号进入计算公式。几乎所有结果都表明，EC 对新官方 CCI 的方法论变化依赖于更强大的理论基础，并增强了 CCI 的预测能力。与私人消费的相关性比以前更高，而跟踪变化方向的成功率与以前相似。然而，新的 CCI 可以更精确地捕捉高达 20-30% 的变化方向。相关值意味着新 CCI 的改进可能高达 9%，并提出了进一步改进的指导方针。耐用品的预期支出是构建 CCI 最相关的调查问题。与私人消费的相关性比以前更高，而跟踪变化方向的成功率与以前相似。然而，新的 CCI 可以更精确地捕捉高达 20-30% 的变化方向。相关值意味着新 CCI 的改进可能高达 9%，并提出了进一步改进的指导方针。耐用品的预期支出是构建 CCI 最相关的调查问题。与私人消费的相关性比以前更高，而跟踪变化方向的成功率与以前相似。然而，新的 CCI 可以更精确地捕捉高达 20-30% 的变化方向。相关值意味着新 CCI 的改进可能高达 9%，并提出了进一步改进的指导方针。耐用品的预期支出是构建 CCI 最相关的调查问题。