The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Prices for Measurement and Research /

New data-gathering techniques, often referred to as "Big Data" have the potential to improve statistics and empirical research in economics. In this paper we describe our work with online data at the Billion Prices Project at MIT and discuss key lessons for both inflation measurement and s...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Weitere Titel:
Billion Prices Project
1. Verfasser:
Cavallo, Alberto
Körperschaft:
National Bureau of Economic Research
Weitere Verfasser:
Rigobon, Roberto
Format:
Elektronisch E-Book
Sprache:
Englisch
Veröffentlicht:
Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.
Zusammenfassung:
New data-gathering techniques, often referred to as "Big Data" have the potential to improve statistics and empirical research in economics. In this paper we describe our work with online data at the Billion Prices Project at MIT and discuss key lessons for both inflation measurement and some fundamental research questions in macro and international economics. In particular, we show how online prices can be used to construct daily price indexes in multiple countries and to avoid measurement biases that distort evidence of price stickiness and international relative prices. We emphasize how Big Data technologies are providing macro and international economists with opportunities to stop treating the data as "given" and to get directly involved with data collection.
Umfang:
1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
Anmerkungen:
March 2016.
Schlagworte: