{
  "title": "Cosmetics Spending and Recession Resilience in the United States",
  "author": "Ryder Xue",
  "project": "Sillage Index",
  "version": "1.0",
  "publication_date": "2026-10-05",
  "timezone": "America/New_York",
  "status": "self-published AI-assisted working paper; not peer reviewed",
  "canonical_url": "https://ryderxue.com/research/cosmetics-recession-resilience/paper.html",
  "doi": null,
  "new_hypotheses_or_analyses": false,
  "frozen_replication_verified": true,
  "frozen_data_span": [
    "1959-01",
    "2026-08"
  ],
  "ai_assistance": "Code generation, citation discovery, manuscript drafting and computational review; no independent human expert or journal peer review asserted.",
  "registration_commits": [
    "647aa46062826879af1cb9afdc0f013ce49c1784",
    "da9a8bd726d1079092350c23c5d54496ac4071ea"
  ],
  "license": "No new license assigned; author retains rights in the manuscript and original code, subject to source data rights.",
  "abstract": "This paper assesses whether a grouped cosmetics and perfume consumption category holds up better than clothing after US business cycle peaks. A locally locked analysis plan specifies nine NBER peaks from April 1960 to February 2020 and a frozen vintage of BEA monthly quantity indexes spanning January 1959 to August 2026. The primary statistic is the mean cosmetics minus clothing gap twelve months after each peak, relative to each category's preceding endpoint growth trend. The estimated gap is 1.788 log points, with a one-sided calendar-placebo probability of 0.0652, a prespecified Benjamini-Hochberg adjusted value of 0.0652, and positive gaps in four of nine episodes. A rough episode-bootstrap interval is [-1.859, 6.717]. The primary comparison is not established at the registered threshold. Cosmetics have lower pooled quarterly growth sensitivity than clothing, and the jewelry comparison exceeds its placebo benchmark. Excluding the first recession reverses the primary mean. These findings distinguish pooled consumption sensitivity from resilience across recession episodes. Interpretation is limited by nine linked historical events, the quality and breadth of BEA underlying-detail estimates, and an observational placebo design whose exchangeability and inferential calibration are not established.",
  "public_artifact_sha256": {
    "g01_betas.svg": "e80586e4e1f40628453b7f32f2f9749c3f74cf1258c2982720b4fb45afec0ca7",
    "g01_long_run_share.svg": "1cdb5d8ddf36839affad673aec571ce2d6cff76fa845201096a56fda99bcf303",
    "g01_nine_recessions.svg": "6f8b067c7ba912af1093dd0c25d407b185216b24ee5447f3174a15fdac7bbd63",
    "g01_scoreboard.svg": "e6b393277e6180db6fa7256b0269584a7d53b48be8accf077fa32a9e2b03a58d",
    "g01_tilt.svg": "abd7a74a43c8622bf7b469e79dee258a8de92c21fc12f440b4ce96ba956ec1b6",
    "paper.docx": "aa17a19755a448a8e123a04fbef4c68e473cfb2c4d1c126eb1f9dbf42407f932",
    "paper.html": "5e3baf4dbf52cf0c2df23089f6aeb91439861499ee5dd6ac0786b62e592f55e1",
    "paper.md": "d2840df86e36621842e20509309e25a67a2cf1f30b5b4292436d3a092a8326f1",
    "paper.pdf": "10b30be10fb4d9d65e89747f2a0ae8598718e686ead06c04a32e9f77da011aab",
    "replication.zip": "fabd15e7fb236d2aaf7ecc567cbb5dd10734888da526538d753c3d743ad08045"
  },
  "public_files": [
    "g01_betas.svg",
    "g01_long_run_share.svg",
    "g01_nine_recessions.svg",
    "g01_scoreboard.svg",
    "g01_tilt.svg",
    "paper.docx",
    "paper.html",
    "paper.md",
    "paper.pdf",
    "replication.zip",
    "publication.json"
  ]
}