An arbitrage opportunity for Ebenezer Scrooge?
When I worked at the Bank of England, many years ago, a (very) senior official once asked why Bank staff felt the need to seasonally adjust the raw retail price index (RPI). If I’m going to be generous, I might say that this was a rhetorical question: he was merely encouraging a group of economists, many fresh out of university, to think through why some prices might vary in a systematic way through the year. Many macroeconomic data display seasonal