A Time Series Analysis Using R for Understanding Car Sales On The Romanian Market

The size of the Romanian automobile industry is relative small compared to the main car producers in Europe and the world, but an analysis of its structure and dynamic appears to be most relevant given the strong linkages with the main macroeconomic indicators and important microeconomic variables at the level of the household.The paper presents a time series analysis for car sales in Romania, in the period 2007-2014, focusing on the sales dynamic of the national main producer– Dacia Pitesti. The aim of the investigation is twofold: to test the impact of macroeconomic variables on this important and underexplored segment of the economy and to emphasize potential differences between the factors influencing the buying decision for domestic versus foreign cars (observed in three regimes: new, registered and reenrolled). While the major influence of the global economic crisis cannot be ignored for the analyzed interval, we believe that it may also help to illustrate the real behaviors of individuals by setting the line between the immediate period after the crisis as treatment under scarcity conditions and the re-installment of normality towards the second half of the time interval. The results are confirming the general findings of the literature for the main indicators but they not entirely consistent with the rational economic models, especially with regard to the nature of the investigated goods (the cars) – normal or positional.