Unwrapping the NRF Holiday Sales Forecast

The all-important holiday shopping season is upon us.

As the humorous proverb goes, “It is difficult to predict, especially the future.” So, as someone in the business of economic modeling and prediction, I thought it might be useful to explore the rationale behind NRF’s 2014 holiday forecast, which calls for a retail sales increase of 4.1 percent to a total of $616.9 billion.