The Use of Scanner Data for Economics Research

Martin O'Connell (), Pierre Dubois and Rachel Griffith
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Martin O'Connell: Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, United Kingdom

Annual Review of Economics, 2022, vol. 14, issue 1, 723-745

Abstract: The adoption of barcode scanning technology in the 1970s 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 they typically track a panel of stores and/or consumers. Their availability has led to advances, inter alia, in the study of consumer demand, the measurement of market power, firms’ strategic interactions and decision making, the evaluation of policy reforms, and the measurement of price dispersion and inflation. In this article we highlight some of the pros and cons of this data source, and we 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)
JEL-codes: C80 D12 D22 E31 L10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-051520-024949
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Related works:
Working Paper: The Use of Scanner Data for Economics Research (2022)
Working Paper: The Use of Scanner Data for Economics Research (2022)
Working Paper: The Use of Scanner Data for Economics Research (2022)
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DOI: 10.1146/annurev-economics-051520-024949

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