Search Results
Journal Article
Residual seasonality and monetary policy
Much recent discussion has suggested that the official real GDP data are inadequately adjusted for recurring seasonal fluctuations. A similar pattern of insufficient seasonal adjustment also affects the published data for a key measure of price inflation. Still, such residual seasonality in the published output and inflation statistics is unlikely to mislead Federal Reserve policymakers or adversely affect the setting of monetary policy.
Journal Article
Seasonal production smoothing
Empirical tests of the production-smoothing hypothesis have yielded mixed results. In this paper, Donald Allen looks for and finds evidence of seasonal production smoothing in 15 out of 25 manufacturing series and eight out of 10 retail series, using detrended seasonally unadjusted data. The equivalent test using seasonally adjusted data were negative for all 35 series. The results suggest that seasonally adjusted data obscure short-term production smoothing.
Report
Periodic linear-quadratic methods for modeling seasonality
Optimal linear regulator methods are used to represent a class of models of endogenous equilibrium seasonality that has so far received little attention. Seasonal structure is built into these models in either of two equivalent ways: periodically varying the coefficient matrices of a formerly nonseasonal problem or embedding this periodic-coefficient problem in a higher-dimensional sparse system whose time-invariant matrices have a special pattern of zero blocks. The former structure is compact and convenient computationally; the latter can be used to apply familiar convergence results from ...
Working Paper
Federal Reserve policy strategy and interest rate seasonality
During the 1970's short-term interest rates have exhibited extreme variability by recent historical standards.
Working Paper
A neoclassical model of seasonal fluctuations
Working Paper
Interactions between the seasonal and business cycles in production and inventories
This paper shows that in several U.S. manufacturing industries, the seasonal variability of production and inventories varies with the state of the business cycle. We present a simple model which implies that if firms reduce the seasonal variability of their production as the economy strengthens, and they either hold constant or increase the stock of inventories they bring into the high-production seasons of the year, then they must face upward-sloping and convex marginal production cost curves. We conclude that firms in a number of industries face upward-sloping and convex ...
Working Paper
Institutional investors, analyst following, and the January anomaly
Studies have documented that average stock returns for small, low-stock-price firms are higher in January than for the rest of the year. Two explanations have received a great deal of attention: the tax-loss selling hypothesis and the gamesmanship hypothesis. This paper documents that seasonality in returns is not a phenomenon observed only for small firms' stock or those with low prices. Strong seasonality in excess returns is reported for a sample of widely followed firms. Sample firms have unusually low excess returns in January, and returns adjust upward over the remainder of the year. ...
Discussion Paper
A systems approach to recursive economic forecasting and seasonal adjustment
The paper discusses a new, fully recursive approach to the adaptive modeling, forecasting and seasonal adjustment of nonstationary economic time-series. The procedure is based around a time variable parameter (TVP) version of the well known component or structural model. It employs a novel method of sequential spectral decomposition (SSD), based on recursive state-space smoothing, to decompose the series into a number of quasi-orthogonal components. This SSD procedure can be considered as a complete approach to the problem of model identification and estimation, or it can be used as a first ...