'Twas Four Weeks before Christmas: Retail Sales and the Length of the Christmas Shopping Season

Emek Basker

No 414, Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Missouri

Abstract: I study the effect of the length of the Christmas "shopping season" in the United States (traditionally, beginning the day after US Thanksgiving) on aggregate retail sales. I find a statistically significant increase in per-capita retail sales in November and December (combined) of approximately $6.50 per additional day over the relevant range. The implications of these finding are briefly discussed.

Keywords: Christmas; Retail; Shopping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L81 D12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc
Date: 2004-10-20, Revised 2004-10-20
View list of references

Published in Economic Letters, 89:3 (December 2005), pp. 317-322

Downloads: (external link)
http://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2004/wp0414_basker.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: 'Twas four weeks before Christmas: Retail sales and the length of the Christmas shopping season (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:umc:wpaper:0414

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Missouri
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Stratton ().