Experts Mixed on How Much Credit Trump Deserves for Post-Election Economic Bounce

— -- President-elect Donald Trump is connecting the strength of the economy to his election, though it is unclear how accurate that connection is.

Trump boasted about the Consumer Confidence Index on Twitter on Tuesday, correctly noting that the index has reached its highest point in more than a decade and a half.

"The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS! Thanks Donald!" he wrote, prompting social media users to start the hashtag "#thanksdonald." The hashtag trended worldwide for a time, spawning more than 83,000 tweets as of just before 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Tuesday's tweet wasn't the only time in the past week that Trump credited himself with boosting the economy.

But Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody's Analytics, a company focused on providing insight to global financial markets, says it is too soon to tell if the bump is tied to Trump or not, his self-congratulatory tweets aside.

"It may be his supporters being happy that he won -- it's possible," Zandi told ABC News. "It may be that people are just relieved that the election is over. It was a pretty emotionally trying election."

He added: "These survey numbers go up and down and all around, and one month does not make a trend."

The Conference Board, which produces the Consumer Confidence Index, said that the surge in optimism was "most pronounced among older consumers."

"Looking ahead to 2017, consumers’ continued optimism will depend on whether or not their expectations are realized," Lynn Franco, the director of economic indicators at The Conference Board, said in a statement Tuesday.

David Wessel, a senior fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution, a research group based in Washington, D.C., said that the surge in consumer confidence and the stock market post-election could rightly be attributed to Trump and the GOP as a whole.

"It seems fair to give Mr. Trump and (importantly) the Republican Congress credit for that -- though it's stretch to say that already has translated into consumer spending or business investment," Wessel told ABC News by email.

"Of course, the risk that Mr. Trump runs by taking credit for the upswings is that he will be blamed for the downturns if, for instance, he cannot deliver on his vow to bring back factory jobs or if Congress fails to enact legislation fulfilling all his tax promises," Wessel added.