Scanner Data and Price Indexes
Robert C. Feenstra and Matthew D. Shapiro
Abstract
Every time you buy a can of tuna or a new television, its bar code is scanned to record its price and other information. These “scanner data” offer a number of attractive features for economists and statisticians, because they are collected continuously, are available quickly, and record prices for all items sold, not just a statistical sample. But scanner data also present a number of difficulties for current statistical systems. This book assesses both the promise and the challenges of using scanner data to produce economic statistics. Three chapters in this book present the results of work ... More
Every time you buy a can of tuna or a new television, its bar code is scanned to record its price and other information. These “scanner data” offer a number of attractive features for economists and statisticians, because they are collected continuously, are available quickly, and record prices for all items sold, not just a statistical sample. But scanner data also present a number of difficulties for current statistical systems. This book assesses both the promise and the challenges of using scanner data to produce economic statistics. Three chapters in this book present the results of work in progress at statistical agencies in the U.S., United Kingdom, and Canada, including a project at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to investigate the feasibility of incorporating scanner data into the monthly Consumer Price Index. Other chapters demonstrate the enormous potential of using scanner data to test economic theories and estimate the parameters of economic models, and provide solutions for some of the problems that arise when using scanner data, such as dealing with missing data.
Keywords:
bar code,
scanner data,
statistical systems,
economic statistics,
Consumer Price Index,
economic models,
missing data,
economists,
statisticians,
statistical agencies
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2002 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226239651 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: February 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226239668.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Robert C. Feenstra, editor
Matthew D. Shapiro, editor
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