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Cavallo, Alberto, and Roberto Rigobon (2016) "The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Data for Measurement and Research" - Journal of Economic Perspectives , 31(1) (Spring 2016)

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Cavallo, Alberto, and Roberto Rigobon (2016) "The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Data for Measurement and Research" - Journal of Economic Perspectives , 31(1) (Spring 2016)
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6RQCRS
 
Creator Cavallo, Alberto
Rigobon, Roberto
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description 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.
 
Subject Business and Management
Social Sciences
Online Data
Billion Prices Project
 
Contributor Cavallo, Alberto