The Great Recession, Cereal Edition
Published:
The financial crisis was a difficult time for cereal fans. The number of new products introduced in the breakfast cereal market fell from 60 to 20 in the three years after 2008.
Official inflation measures tend to overestimate the true inflation rate because it is difficult to account for the introduction of new products. If other markets exhibited the same trends as cereals, the upward bias in inflation is likely to have fallen in the years immediately after 2008.
Find the source code below:
hist year if year >= 1996, graphregion(color(white)) bgcolor(white) ///
title(`"{fontface "Garamond":Production of New Cereals Collapsed after 2008}"', color(black) ring(0) position(11)) ///
subtitle(`"{fontface "Garamond": Cereal Introductions by Year}"', color(gs6) ring(0) pos(11) margin(0 0 0 6)) ///
note("{bf:Source:} The Cereal Project, retrieved from https://www.mrbreakfast.com on 7/9/2019.", color(gs7)) ///
freq addlabel ytitle("# of New Cereals") width(1) ylabel(0 77, nogrid) yscale(off) ///
xlabel(1996(4)2020, labsize(small)) xtitle("") fcolor(navy) fintensity(inten80) lcolor(black) ///
text(30.5 1999 "General Mills introduced" ///
"{bf:Reese's Puffs} in 1999.", size(small) color(sand)) ///
text(48 2013.7 "Quaker adds {bf:Golden Maple} to" ///
"their Oat Squares lineup in 2009.", size(small) color(sand)) ///
text(53 2004 "Kellogg's debuts {bf:Shrek}" ///
"themed cereal in 2007.", size(small) color(sand))