Billion Prices Proj ect: Avoiding the Big Data Small Info S yndrome - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Dec 19, 2023 328 likes •485 views

Billion Prices Proj ect: Avoiding the Big Data Small Info S yndrome Roberto Rigobon MIT S loan, NBER, CS AC Big distance between Data and Information! The world is not lacking of data, its lacking of information Need a question

SLIDE 1

Billion Prices Proj ect:

Avoiding the Big Data – Small Info S yndrome

Roberto Rigobon MIT S loan, NBER, CS AC

SLIDE 2

Big distance between Data and Information!

 The world is not lacking of data, it’s lacking of

information

 Need a question before collection  Data without purpose, produces problems not information

 Great Data is not a licenses for Bad Econometrics

 Need to understand phenomena  Measuring is not Predicting  Correlations are hardly Causal

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Inflation and Price Indexes

 Albert o Cavallo  We want t o produce alt ernat ive measures of inflat ion

 We need prices  We need methodology to weight those prices  We need to understand product introductions and

discontinuations

 We need to understand store behavior  How to collect prices of products not sold on the internet?

S ervices?

SLIDE 4

Online Information and Indexes

Dat e
It em
Price
Descript ion

Our Approach to Daily Inflation S tatistics

Use scraping t echnology Connect t o t housands of

nline ret ailers

every day Find individual it ems Develop daily inflat ion st at ist ics for ~20 count ries

1 2 3 4 5

S t ore and process key it em informat ion in a dat abase

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How do we collect data?



Our prices are collected from public online sources, using a technique called “web scraping”



A software downloads a webpage, analyses the html code, “scrapes” price data, and stores it in a database

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Countries covered

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Properties of Inflation Indexes

 Congruence

 S

tores keep markups between online and offline prices relatively constant in the medium run

 Anticipation

 Online Price Indexes trends anticipate official inflation shifts.  Online prices are easier to change, retailers are more

competitive, and consumers have less memory.

 Demand trends

 Changes in inflation trends by retailers reflect changes in the

demand they are facing

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Argentina

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US A

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US Recession

S ep 16 2008

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US 2012

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Argentina Australia Colombia Germany Ireland

Annual Inflation Rates

UK China – S upermarket Index Russia Venezuela

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Other Indexes

 Nat ural Disast er’s Measurement  Employment  Real Est at e Inflat ion and Capit al Gains  GDP and Economic Act ivit y

SLIDE 14

Thailand: When Help S hould Be Deployed?

Not es: Product Availabilit y normalized t o 100 on 10/ 1/ 2011

20 40 60 80 100 120

10/ 1 10/ 2 10/ 3 10/ 4 10/ 5 10/ 6 10/ 7 10/ 8 10/ 9 10/ 10 10/ 11 10/ 12 10/ 13 10/ 14 10/ 15 10/ 16 10/ 17 10/ 18 10/ 19 10/ 20 10/ 21 10/ 22 10/ 23 10/ 24 10/ 25 10/ 26 10/ 27 10/ 28 10/ 29 10/ 30 10/ 31 Product Availability In Online Retailers