LAUSR

Abstract This study sets out to explore the effects of business and consumer sentiment on stock market performance, within the separate contexts of advanced and emerging markets. The empirical analysis is carried out using the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) modeling approach, which considers time dynamics, cross-sectional heterogeneity, and cross-sectional dependence. The findings for developed markets suggest that business sentiment has positive leading effects on stock returns, across short- and long-term time horizons, while for emerging markets, the price impact of business sentiment turns out to be short-lived. On the other hand, consumer sentiment tends to affect positively both market types, albeit only in the short run. Furthermore, the influence of sentiment indicators seems to be stronger in emerging- than in developed-market countries. The results remain robust, even after controlling for a rich range of potential predictors of stock returns. Generally, such evidence highlights the relevance of psychological factors, such as business and consumer sentiment, in determining the future trajectory of asset prices.