Using the Retail Distribution of Sellers to Impute Expenditure Shares

Alexis Antoniades, Robert Feenstra and Mingzhi (Jimmy) Xu

American Economic Review, 2022, vol. 112, issue 7, 2213-36

Abstract: 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.

JEL-codes: E31 L11 L81 O11 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1257/aer.20190896

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