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The Economics of Seasonal Cycles

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Author Info
Jeffrey A. Miron

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Abstract

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 their empirical testing of these models. This standard practice is a useful simplification if two key conditions hold. The first is that there are no interactions between seasonal cycles and business cycles: they result from different exogenous factors and different economic propagation mechanisms. The second is that there are no important welfare issues attached to seasonal fluctuations per se: optimal government policy toward seasonals is simply to leave them alone. The purpose of this essay is twofold. It first summarizes recent work demonstrating that seasonal cycles and business cycles are intimately related, displaying similar stylized facts and being driven by similar economic propogation mechanisms. The essay then discusses the possible welfare implications of seasonal cycles, suggesting there is no reasonable presumption they are uninteresting from a welfare or policy perspective. Taken together, these results imply the need for a significant re-orientation in economists' treatment of seasonal fluctuations. Rather than a component of the data to be adjusted away and treated as noise, seasonal fluctuations represent a key topic of economic analysis. They contain significant information about the nature of business cycles, and they require analysis in their own right because they may induce significant welfare losses.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 3522.

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Date of creation: Dec 1990
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3522

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  1. Edward C. Prescott, 1986. "Theory ahead of business cycle measurement," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Fall, pages 9-22. [Downloadable!]
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  2. J. Joseph Beaulieu & Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason & Jeffrey A. Miron, 1991. "Why Do Countries and Industries with Large Seasonal Cycles Also Have Large Business Cycles?," NBER Working Papers 3635, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Newey, Whitney K & West, Kenneth D, 1987. "A Simple, Positive Semi-definite, Heteroskedasticity and Autocorrelation Consistent Covariance Matrix," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 703-08, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Spencer Krane & Steven Braun, 1990. "Production smoothing evidence from physical-product data," Working Paper Series / Economic Activity Section 103, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  5. Ghysels, E., 1990. "The Business Cycle, The Seasonal Cycle Or Just Any Cycle," Cahiers de recherche 9036, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
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  6. Boldrin, Michele & Woodford, Michael, 1990. "Equilibrium models displaying endogenous fluctuations and chaos : A survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 189-222, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Bell, William R. & Wilcox, David W., 1993. "The effect of sampling error on the time series behavior of consumption data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1-2), pages 235-265. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Robert B. Barsky & Jeffrey A. Miron, 1989. "The Seasonal Cycle and the Business Cycle," NBER Working Papers 2688, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Cooper, Russell & John, Andrew, 1988. "Coordinating Coordination Failures in Keynesian Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 103(3), pages 441-63, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Mankiw, N. Gregory & Miron, Jeffrey A., 1991. "Should the fed smooth interest rates? the case of seasonal monetary policy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 41-69, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Simon Kuznets, 1933. "Seasonal Variations in Industry and Trade," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kuzn33-1.
  13. Bell, William R & Hillmer, Steven C, 1984. "Issues Involved with the Seasonal Adjustment of Economic Time Series," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 2(4), pages 291-320, October.
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  18. Diamond, Peter & Fudenberg, Drew, 1989. "Rational Expectations Business Cycles in Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 606-19, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Ghysels, E., 1986. "A Study Towards a Dynamic Theory of Seasonality for Economic Time Series," Cahiers de recherche 8612, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
  20. N. Gregory Mankiw & Michael D. Whinston, 1986. "Free Entry and Social Inefficiency," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(1), pages 48-58, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  21. Topel, Robert H, 1984. "Experience Rating of Unemployment Insurance and the Incidence of Unemployment," Journal of Law & Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 61-90, April.
  22. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-70, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  23. Deere, D.R., 1989. "Unemployment Insurance And Employment," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series 27-89, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
  24. King, Robert G & Plosser, Charles I, 1984. "Money, Credit, and Prices in a Real Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 363-80, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  25. Osborn, Denise R & Smith, Jeremy P, 1989. "The Performance of Periodic Autoregressive Models in Forecasting Seasonal U. K. Consumption," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 7(1), pages 117-27, January.
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  27. Mankiw, N Gregory & Miron, Jeffrey A, 1986. "The Changing Behavior of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 211-28, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  28. Dixit, Avinash K & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1977. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 297-308, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  29. Lucas, Robert E., 1977. "Understanding business cycles," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 7-29, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  30. Eichenbaum, Martin, 1989. "Some Empirical Evidence on the Production Level and Production Cost Smoothing Models of Inventory Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 853-64, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  31. Kahn, J.A., 1990. "The Seasonal And Cyclical Behavior Of Inventories," RCER Working Papers 223, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
  32. Russell Cooper & John Haltiwanger, 1990. "Macroeconomic Implications of Production Bunching: Factor Demand Linkages," Papers 0001, Boston University - Industry Studies Programme.
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  33. Osborn, Denise R, 1988. "Seasonality and Habit Persistence in a Life Cycle Model of Consumptio n," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 3(4), pages 255-66, October-D. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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