Index number approaches to seasonal adjustment

A seasonal commodity is one that either (1) is not available during certain seasons or (2) is always available but its prices or quantities fluctuate with the season or time of year. The existence of type-1 seasonal commoditi es in consumer preference functions means that the usual economic approach to index number theory cannot be applied to construct a short-term month-to -month or quarter-to-quarter consumer price index. We postulate various sep arability assumptions on intertemporal preferences that can be used to just ify various seasonal index number formulas. One of our approaches leads to an index number solution to the problem of seasonal adjustment.