Is it good to be bad or bad to be good?: Assessing the aggregate impact of abnormal weather on consumer spending
Open access
Date
2018-10Type
- Working Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
Although the influence of exceptional weather on individual behaviour has already been acknowledged in finance, psychology, and marketing, the literature examining weather effects at more aggregate level is still limited. Further, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that weather anomalies affect consumer spending and retail business. The main aim of this analysis is to investigate and quantify the effects of unusual weather in consumer spending at macro-level. Using aggregate retail sales data for Switzerland, our findings reveal that weather deviations from seasonal norms, especially, unusually high or low temperatures in a given month, do cause sizeable intertemporal shifts in consumer spending at country level. Furthermore, the effects of abnormal weather are found to differ across seasons, both with respect to sign and magnitude. In particular, our findings indicate that weather effects manifest mainly through the seasons change channel: weather conditions in line with the coming season boost the purchases early in the season. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000298425Publication status
publishedJournal / series
KOF Working PapersVolume
Publisher
KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH ZurichSubject
intertemporal shifts; consumer spending; retail sales; unusual weatherOrganisational unit
02525 - KOF Konjunkturforschungsstelle / KOF Swiss Economic Institute
06331 - KOF FB Konjunkturumfragen / KOF Business Tendency Surveys
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ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics