Does seasonality change over the business cycle? An investigation using monthly industrial production series

This paper examines the proposition that the business cycle affects seasonality in industrial production, with output being switched to the traditionally low production summer months when recent (annual) growth has been strong. This is investigated through the use of a restricted threshold autoregressive model for the monthly growth rate in a total of 74 industries in 16 OECD countries. Approximately one-third of the series exhibit significant nonlinearity, with this nonlinearity predominantly associated with changes in the seasonal pattern. Estimates show that the summer slowdown in many European countries is substantially reduced in the regime of higher recent growth. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.