In recent years, the sales reports of major retail chains have received increasing attention as timely indicators of consumer spending. Despite this attention, a close review of the literature on chain store indexes as macroeconomic indicators reveals that there is no literature! This paper...

Perhaps no piece of news garners more attention in exchange markets than the U.S. employment report. Yet there has been only limited research on the market's response to the monthly release. This article quantifies the impact of the report and explains why exchange market sensitivity to the...

Released at both weekly and monthly intervals, chain store indexes provide a timely measure of the sales performance of large retail companies. This article investigates whether the indexes can also play a role in tracking and forecasting consumer spending as a whole. The authors begin by...

The authors document the trends in U.S. saving during the 1980s, giving particular attention to those measures of saving that gauge the growth of productive assets. They go on to assess the effects of these developments on capital formation and the nation's long-term economic potential.