This paper deals with an alternative approach to treating seasonality in error correction models for consumption with a parsimonious parameterization as proposed by Harvey and Scott. We introduce an unobserved seasonal component into an error correction model for Austrian consumer expenditures...

In the first half of 1991, expenditures on durable consumer goods, a cyclically sensitive component of consumption, grew only as fast as total consumption; this is in contrast to the development in recent years and the medium-term trend. The demand for vacations abroad was also rather weak as...

In the first half of 1989 consumer expenditures (adjusted for price increases) were 2.5 percent higher than in the first half of 1988, exceeding the level in the second half of 1988 by 2.3 percent (on a seasonally adjusted basis). This favourable development occurred despite a rise in the saving...

The fights in Slovenia and Croatia interrupted some important transport links to South-Eastern-Europe. The decline of Austria's foreign trade with Yugoslavia accelerated. Austria's tourism industry benefitted to some extent from the collapse of tourism in Yugoslavia. Retail and wholesale firms...

Tax cuts like those of 1 January 2000 drive consumer demand, even though only part of the liquidity thus gained will be spent on consumption, whereas savings grow to an even greater extent. The propensity to save rises, at least in the short term, as is the case when the economy is on an...

The economic analysis of sustainable consumption structures concentrates on the extent to which it is possible and recommendable to foster substitution of flows by stocks (improving the thermal quality of buildings, more energy-efficient transport systems). Also of relevance is the role that...

The austerity budgets adopted in 1996 and 1997 to consolidate the public household put a brake on income development in Austria. Although private households reacted with a significant weakening of their propensity to save (i.e., a larger share of disposable income went into private consumption),...

Private consumption has continued to exert a stabilizing effect on the Austrian economy in 1996. With income declining, mainly as a result of the "austerity package", the saving rate decreased, as private households attempted to maintain their accustomed consumption pattern. Before the...