Testing for a Santa Claus effect in growth cycles

We examine the seasonal distribution of turning points in the post-war growth cycles of sixteen economies. Using nonparametric tests for distributions on the circle, we cannot reject a uniform distribution for the turning points for most of the countries. In the case of troughs, uniformity is supported for eleven countries, notwithstanding the unusually large number of December or January troughs. This provides evidence against a ‘Santa Claus effect’ in the growth cycle.