Sellin’ in the Rain: Weather, Climate, and Retail Sales

The views in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or its staff. The author thanks the referees, Richard Carson, Julie Cullen, Glenn Folette, Stephie Fried, Dalia Ghanem, Joshua Graff Zivin, Bart Hobijn, Joanne Hsu, Ivan Ivanov, Mark Jacobsen, Sarah Jacobson, Christopher Parsons, Ketki Sheth, Richard Sommerville, and colleagues at the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for helpful comments. The paper benefited from very thoughtful comments from seminar participants at University of California, San Diego, Resources for the Future, the Heartland Environment and Resource Economics Workshop 2018, the Federal Reserve Board, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, the Federal Housing and Finance Agency, and the Federal Reserve System Energy Workshop for helpful comments. Finally, the author thanks Jack Mueller for careful proofreading. Portions of this analysis were previously circulated as a working paper and then published as part of a dissertation under the title “Blame it on the Rain: Weather Shocks and Retail Sales” (Roth Tran 2016).