Using the Retail Distribution of Sellers to Impute Expenditure Shares

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Antoniades, Alexis; Feenstra, Robert C.; Xu, Mingzhi (Jimmy)
• 署名单位: Georgetown University; University of California System; University of California Davis; National Bureau of Economic Research; Peking University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20190896
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 2213-2236
• 关键词: prices; online; WORLD

摘要

Many price indices must be constructed without quantity data at the elementary level. The paper shows that for some consumer goods in the United States and other countries, one can approximate expenditure shares using weights derived from the retail distribution of sellers. These weights are based on the share of outlets selling an item, or the share of outlets adjusted by the total number of items sold in each. Relative to using no weights, the paper finds that using such imputed weights substantially reduces bias in the frequency of price changes, in annual inflation, and in price comparisons across countries.