The Mysterious Cross-Country Dispersion in Mobile Phone Price Trends

David Byrne

National Institute Economic Review, 2019, vol. 249, issue 1, R39-R46

Abstract: Mobile phones have been central to ICT innovation since the introduction of the smartphone and constant-quality prices are a barometer of their economic impact. Official consumer price indices (CPIs) indicate that impact differs wildly across countries: for the 2008–18 period, average annual rates of mobile phone inflation range from no change to a 25 per cent decline among 12 key countries examined in this paper. Although evidence indicates certain fundamental factors are at play, mis-measurement may lead the spread in rates to be overstated. Examination of methods employed in CPI calculation, including quality adjustment and index formulas, illuminates but does not resolve the mystery.

Keywords: price indexes; information and communications technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002795011924900113 (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Mysterious Cross-Country Dispersion in Mobile Phone Price Trends (2019)
Working Paper: The Mysterious Cross-Country Dispersion in Mobile Phone Price Trends (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:niesru:v:249:y:2019:i:1:p:r39-r46

DOI: 10.1177/002795011924900113

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in National Institute Economic Review from National Institute of Economic and Social Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().