The use of scanner data for economics research

Pierre Dubois, Rachel Griffith and Martin O'Connell
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Pierre Dubois: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Rachel Griffith: Unknown
Martin O'Connell: Unknown

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Abstract: The adoption of barcode scanning technology in the 1970's gave rise to a new form of data; scanner data. Soon afterwards researchers began using this new resource, and since then a large number of papers have exploited scanner data. The data provide detailed price, quantity and product characteristic information for completely disaggregate products at high frequency and typically either track a panel of stores and/or consumers. Their availability has led to advances, inter alia, in the study of consumer demand, the mea- surement of market power, rms' strategic interactions and decision-making, the evaluation of policy reforms, and the measurement of price dispersion and in ation. In this article we highlight some of the pro and cons of this data source, and discuss some of the ways its availability to researchers has transformed the economics literature.

Keywords: scanner data; demand estimation; market power; policy counterfactual; inflation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02-11
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