This Day in History: Industrial Relations professor George W. Taylor was born on this day in 1901. He came up with what is known as the Hemline Index theory. The theory suggests that hemlines on women's dresses rise along with stock prices. In good economies, we get such results as miniskirts (as seen in the 1920s and the 1960s), or in poor economic times, as shown by the 1929 Wall Street Crash, hems can drop almost overnight. Of course this index is almost useless now that many women wear pants.
There is also a Men's Underwear Index, which is an economic index that can supposedly detect the beginnings of a recovery during an economic slump. The premise is that men's underwear are a necessity in normal economic times when sales remain stable. During a severe downturn, demand for these goods changes as new purchases are suspended. Ergo, men's purchasing habits for underwear is thought to be a good indicator of discretionary spending for economic turnaround periods.
See also: How your undies track the recession
Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan actually followed this index.
There is also a Big Mac Index. "The Big Mac index is a survey created by The Economist magazine in 1986 to measure purchasing power parity (PPP) between nations, using the price of a McDonald's Big Mac as the benchmark."~Investopedia
"McDonald's has stores in 118 countries. This means its Big Mac burger can provide a useful control variable.
In theory, the price of a Big Mac is the result of many local economic factors. This could be the price of the ingredients, local wages, or how much it costs to put up billboards and buy TV ads.
These variables are what make the Big Mac Index so valuable. Many economists find that the PPP metric you can get from comparing the prices of Big Macs around the world is a reasonable measure of real-world purchasing power." ~The Balance
The Big Mac Index is much like the Starbucks Index
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