Empirical tests of the production-smoothing hypothesis have yielded mixed results. In this paper, Donald Allen looks for, and finds evidence of, seasonal production smoothing in 15 out of 25 manufacturing series and 8 out of 10 retail series, using detrended seasonally unadjusted data. The...

During the 1970's short-term interest rates have exhibited extreme variability by recent historical standards.

We consider a dynamic, stochastic equilibrium business cycle model which is augmented to reflect seasonal shifts in preferences, technology, and government purchases. Our estimated parameterization implies implausibly large seasonal variation in the state of technology: rising at an annual rate...

Optimal monetary policy for an economy with seasonal fluctuations and a cash-in-advance requirement on the purchase of consumption goods is studied. It is shown that the short delay in the availability of newly acquired funds for consumption purchases (the hallmark of cash-in-advance models)...

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...

In a world where time series show clear seasonal fluctuations, rational agents will take account of those fluctuations in planning their own behavior. Using seasonally adjusted data to model behavior of such agents throws away information and introduces possibly severe bias. Nonetheless it may...

An examination of whether one should seasonally adjust data before developing multivariate time series models to provide forecasts.