We document a change in household shopping behavior during the Great Recession. Households purchased more on sale, larger sizes and generic products, increased coupon usage, and shopping at discount stores. We estimate that the returns to these shopping activities declined during the recession...

Temporary price reductions (sales) are common for many goods and naturally result in large increase in the quantity sold. We explore whether the data support the hypothesis that these increases are, at least partly, due to dynamic consumer behavior: at low prices consumers stockpile for future...

We report results from a validation study of Nielsen Homescan data. We use data from a large grocery chain to match thousands of individual transactions that were recorded by both the retailer (at the store) and the Nielsen Homescan panelist (at home). First, we report how often shopping trips...

We study intertemporal price discrimination when consumers can store for future consumption needs. To make the problem tractable we offer a simple model of demand dynamics, which we estimate using market level data. Optimal pricing involves temporary price reductions that enable sellers to...

Temporary price reductions (sales) are common for many goods and naturally result in large increases in the quantity sold. Demand estimation based on temporary price reductions may mis-measure the long run responsiveness to prices. In this paper we quantify the extent of the problem and assess...

A common approach to measuring price changes is to look at the change of the expenditure needed to purchase a fixed basket of goods. It is well-known that this approach suffers from problems and creates several biases in the measurement of price changes faced by consumers. Substitution and...