Prices and inflation in Austria during the COVID-19 crisis – an analysis based on online price data

Christian Beer (christian.beer@oenb.at), Fabio Rumler and Joel Tölgyes (joel.toelgyes@oenb.at)
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Christian Beer: Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Economic Analysis Division
Joel Tölgyes: Oesterreichische Nationalbank

Monetary Policy & the Economy, 2021, issue Q4/20-Q1/21, 65-75

Abstract: To shed light on price developments during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria, we analyze online price data collected from April to August 2020 by means of webscraping. Our analysis focuses on product categories that received special attention during the COVID-19 crisis, such as food and medical products. In contrast to what has been reported in the media, we find only small price changes for most product categories over the observation period. For food, nonalcoholic beverages, personal care products and IT equipment, we find small price decreases. Prices for alcoholic beverages remained broadly stable. Medical products and delivered meals saw very small price increases. When comparing price changes derived from our online price dataset with monthly price changes as reported in official inflation statistics, we find similarities for some product categories but also considerable differences for others. These differences are most likely attributable to methodological differences in data collection. For the analysis of price developments, we find that webscraped data are a useful data source complementary to data from official inflation statistics.

Keywords: inflation; price developments; COVID-19; webscraping; online shops (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C82 E31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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