The heterogeneity of consumer sentiment in an increasingly homogenous global economy

► We examine time series of consumer sentiment for Canada, France, Germany and the U.K. ► We decompose these consumer sentiment series into variation resulting from objective economic fluctuations versus residual variation. ► These series exhibit quite distinct bouts of hyper-pessimism and hyper-optimism unwarranted by the "real" economy. ► We describe how this pessimism and optimism varies across national contexts. ► We hypothesize that these residual fluctuations can be explained by political factors in each country.