The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Prices for Measurement and Research
Name
BPP_JEP article with Appendix.pdf
Size
1.33 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
995f11d0f05282d122def54243c1d941
Author(s)
Cavallo, Alberto F.
Rigobon, Roberto
Date Issued
May 2016
Journal
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Cavallo, Alberto, and Roberto Rigobon. “The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Prices for Measurement and Research.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 30.2 (2016): 151–178.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
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.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.30.2.151
