What Do Chain Store Sales Tell Us About Consumer Spending?
22 Pages Posted: 11 Nov 2007
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: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
New Indexes of Coincident and Leading Economic Indicators
By James H. Stock and Mark W. Watson
-
Forecasting Output and Inflation: The Role of Asset Prices
By James H. Stock and Mark W. Watson
-
Predicting U.S. Recessions: Financial Variables as Leading Indicators
-
A Multi-Country Comparison of Term Structure Forecasts at Long Horizons
-
On the Predictive Power of Interest Rates and Interest Rate Spreads
-
Why Does the Paper-Bill Spread Predict Real Economic Activity?
-
A Re-Examination of the Predictability of Economic Activity Using the Yield Spread
By James D. Hamilton and Dong Heon Kim
-
A Re-Examination of the Predictability of Economic Activity Using the Yield Spread
By James D. Hamilton and Dong Heon Kim
-
The Information in the High Yield Bond Spread for the Business Cycle: Evidence and Some Implications
By Mark Gertler and Cara S. Lown
-
The Predictive Content of the Interest Rate Term Spread for Future Economic Growth