Inflation at the Household Level

Greg Kaplan and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl
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Sam Schulhofer-Wohl: https://www.dallasfed.org/fed/leadership/schulhofer-wohl

No WP-2017-13, Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Abstract: We use scanner data to estimate inflation rates at the household level. Households' inflation rates have an annual interquartile range of 6.2 to 9.0 percentage points. Most of the heterogeneity comes not from variation in broadly defined consumption bundles but from variation in prices paid for the same types of goods. Lower-income households experience higher inflation, but most cross-sectional variation is uncorrelated with observables. Households' deviations from aggregate inflation exhibit only slightly negative serial correlation. Almost all variability in a household's inflation rate comes from variability in household-level prices relative to average prices, not from variability in aggregate inflation.

Keywords: Inflation; heterogeneity; households; low income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D30 E31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2017-09-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mon
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (109)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Inflation at the household level (2017)
Working Paper: Inflation at the Household Level (2016)
Working Paper: Inflation at the Household Level (2016)
Working Paper: Inflation at the Household Level (2016)
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