Economic security

Report: Winter Storm Stella to Drag on U.S. GDP

Winter Storm Stella shuttered storefronts, closed schools and complicated commutes across the Northeast on Tuesday, blanketing parts of more than a half-dozen states in blizzard-like conditions and grinding some local economies to a standstill.

But Stella's chill may not lift when temperatures rebound in the coming days and weeks. Gregory Daco, head of U.S. macroeconomics at Oxford Economics, predicted Tuesday that the winter storm could shave up to 0.2 percentage points off the entire country's first-quarter economic growth.

"The macroeconomic impact of the storm is highly dependent on the severity of disruptions to business activity. In that sense, the timing of the storm is quite unfortunate since snow accumulation in major urban areas started early on Tuesday and will last through the day," Daco wrote in a research note. He predicted "a partial commercial shutdown of the region with permanent losses in some business activity (for example spending at restaurants) and in hourly wages."