When the U. S. Census Bureau began looking into seasonal adjustment of the Quarterly Services Survey series, one question was whether trading day adjustments were reasonable. The series started in the fourth quarter of 2003, and consideration of trading day adjustments began when series had only 17 quarters of data. Beyond concern over series length, however, we questioned more generally whether trading day effects are measurable in quarterly series. To answer our questions, we started with monthly Census Bureau series known to have significant trading day effects. We summed to quarterly levels and tested for significance. We tested using both real and simulated effects. This paper discusses the results of our research.

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Time Series and Seasonal Adjustment Working Papers

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