The Federal Reserve Board eagle logo links to home page
Finance and Economics Discussion Series
Finance and Economics Discussion Series logo links to FEDS home page Rational Seasonality
Travis D. Nesmith
2007-4


Abstract: Seasonal adjustment usually relies on statistical models of seasonality that treat seasonal fluctuations as noise corrupting the `true' data. But seasonality in economic series often stems from economic behavior such as Christmas-time spending. Such economic seasonality invalidates the separability assumptions that justify the construction of aggregate economic indexes. To solve this problem, Diewert(1980,1983,1998,1999) incorporates seasonal behavior into aggregation theory. Using duality theory, I extend these results to a larger class of decision problems. I also relax Diewert's assumption of homotheticity. I provide support for Diewert's preferred seasonally-adjusted economic index using weak separability assumptions that are shown to be sufficient.

Keywords: Seasonality, index, numbers, separability, aggregation, duality theory

Full paper (236 KB PDF) | Full Paper (Screen Reader Version)


Home | FEDS | List of 2007 FEDS papers
Accessibility
To comment on this site, please fill out our feedback form.
Last update: February 20, 2007