We examine the retail prices and wholesale prices of a large supermarket chain in Chicago over seven and one-half years. We show that prices tend to fall during the seasonal demand peak for a product and that changes in retail margins account for most of those price changes; thus we add to the...

Using disaggregated production data we show that the size of seasonal cycles changes significantly over the course of the business cycle. In particular, during periods of high economy-wide activity, some industries smooth seasonal fluctuations while others exaggerate them. We interpret this...

Since macroeconomists first began the systematic study of aggregate data, they have grappled with the fact that most economic time series exhibit substantial seasonal variation. In general, macroeconomists abstract from this seasonal variation, both in their models of cyclical behavior and in...

Recent empirical work has found that both aggregate and micro data reject the rational expectations version of the Life Cycle-Permanent Income model of consumption. This paper examines a new possible explanation for the rejections: the treatment of seasonal fluctuations. There are substantial...

Seasonal adjustment procedures attempt to estimate the sample realizations of an unobservable economic time series in the presence of both seasonal factors and irregular factors. In this paper we consider a factor which has not been considered explicitly in previous treatments of seasonal...

The following paper discusses the analysis of some types of economic time series using an altered time scale, or operational time. It is argued that for some series, observations that are ordinarily thought of as equidistant in time are actually irregularly spaced in a more natural time scale....

This paper explores methods for inferring the causal effects of treatments on choices by combining data on real choices with hypothetical evaluations. We propose a class of estimators, identify conditions under which they yield consistent estimates, and derive their asymptotic distributions. The...

Traffic fatalities are the leading cause of mortality in the United States despite being preventable. While several policies have been introduced to improve traffic safety and their effects have been well documented, the role of transitory health shocks or situational factors at explaining...

We study twenty years of monthly production data for 11 manufacturing industries in 19 countries. Using the fact that in some countries production virtually shuts down for one summer month, together with the differences in the timing of aggregate cyclical fluctuations, we are able to learn about...