What Do Chain Store Sales Tell Us About Consumer Spending?

22 Pages Posted: 11 Nov 2007

See all articles by Clara Vega

Clara Vega

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Ethan S. Harris

Bank of America

Date Written: October 1996

Abstract

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 exploring the extent to which developments in chain store sales are representative of retail sales trends overall. They then conduct formal statistical tests of the relationship between chain store data and official measures of total retail sales and personal consumption expenditure. They find that monthly chain store indexes, if given the appropriate weights in forecast models, significantly improve the accuracy of predictions for several measures of consumer spending.

Keywords: sales, retail stores, consumer spending

JEL Classification: C52, C82, E2

Suggested Citation

Vega, Clara and Harris, Ethan S., What Do Chain Store Sales Tell Us About Consumer Spending? (October 1996). Economic Policy Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 1996, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1028773 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1028773

Clara Vega

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ( email )

20th Street and Constitution Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20551
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.federalreserve.gov/research/staff/vegaclarax.htm

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
251
Abstract Views
2,098
Rank
221,631
PlumX Metrics