CFS Working Papers Series
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The Center published working papers on current issues in finance from 2003-2009.
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Browsing CFS Working Papers Series by Subject "electoral process"
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Item The behavior of the Consumer Price Index : 1913 to 2003(Southern New Hampshire University, 2005) Hamid, Shaikh A.; Dhakar, Tej S.This paper analyzes the seasonality in the monthly consumer price index (CPI) over the period January 1913 to December 2003. We examine three types of month effects: if the mean of monthly CPI changes of the entire data set, and of a given month were significantly different from zero; if the mean of monthly CPI changes of a given month was different from the mean of the other months; and if the variance of the monthly CPI changes for a given month was different from the variance of the other months. The mean of monthly CPI changes for the entire data set (0.27%) was found to be significantly greater than zero. The means of monthly changes show a downward trend from September to December. When the data are sliced into three sub-periods, we find an increasing trend in the means and medians of monthly changes but a decreasing trend in the standard deviations of the monthly changes. The mean of monthly CPI changes during the Republican presidencies (0.15%) was significantly lower than during the Democratic presidencies (0.38%). A revised version of this paper has since been published in the journal Applied Economics. Please use this version in your citations.