by Calculated Risk on 3/12/2014 09:07:00 PM

Some more interesting analysis from Atif Mian and Amir Sufi: Weakening Economy or Just Bad Winter?

Retail spending by households in January 2014 was a major disappointment, coming in well below expectations. January 2014 was also one of the coldest months in memory in many parts of the country. Was the extreme cold weather to blame for weak retail spending? Or is the economy weakening? These questions are especially pressing given the release of data tomorrow on February 2014 retail spending–February again was a very cold month.

We use state-level data on new auto purchases to attack this question. Here is the basic idea. Not all states experienced a horrible January 2014 — in fact, much of the western part of the country actually was warmer than normal. We can use this variation across the country in January weather to see if national auto sales were brought down by states that experienced abnormally cold temperatures.
...
The evidence is pretty clear. New auto purchases in January 2014 were more than 5% down in states that were more than 7 degrees below their normal January temperature. New auto purchases were down slightly in states that were between -7 and -4 degrees below normal. In the rest of the country where temperatures were closer to normal, new auto purchases were quite strong.

Bottom line: Blame the weakness on the snow!

Thursday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, the initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for claims to increase to 330 thousand from 323 thousand.

• Also at 8:30 AM, Retail sales for February will be released. The consensus is for retail sales to increase 0.2% in February, and to increase 0.1% ex-autos.

• At 10:00 AM, the Manufacturing and Trade: Inventories and Sales (business inventories) report for January. The consensus is for a 0.4% increase in inventories.