This paper explores alternative methods for adjusting price indices for quality change at scale. These methods can be applied to large-scale item-level transactions data that includes information on prices, quantities, and item attributes. The hedonic methods can take into account the changing...

Key macro indicators such as output, productivity, and inflation are based on a complex system across multiple statistical agencies using different samples and different levels of aggregation. The Census Bureau collects nominal sales, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects prices, and the...

Traditional methods of collecting data from businesses and households face increasing challenges. These include declining response rates to surveys, increasing costs to traditional modes of data collection, and the difficulty of keeping pace with rapid changes in the economy. The digitization of...

This paper uses machine learning (ML) to estimate hedonic price indices at scale from item-level transaction and product characteristics. The procedure uses state-of-the-art approaches from hedonic econometrics and implements them with a neural network ML approach. Applying the methodology to...

We develop a preliminary version of an Integrated Longitudinal Business Database (ILBD) that combines administrative records and survey data for all employer and nonemployer business units in the United States. Unlike other large-scale business databases, the ILBD tracks business transitions...

The pace of business dynamism and entrepreneurship in the U.S. has declined over recent decades. We show that the character of that decline changed around 2000. Since 2000 the decline in dynamism and entrepreneurship has been accompanied by a decline in high-growth young firms. Prior research...

There remains considerable debate in both the theoretical and empirical literature about the differences in the cyclical dynamics of firms by firm size. Some have hypothesized that small firms are more sensitive to cycles while others have posited that larger firms are more sensitive....

This paper uses the 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal as a natural experiment to provide evidence that collective reputation externalities matter for firms. We find that the Volkswagen scandal reduced the U.S. sales of the other German auto manufacturers--BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Smart--by about...

Since 1970, housing's relative price, share of expenditure, and ``unaffordability'' have all grown. We estimate housing demand using a novel compensated framework over space and an uncompensated framework over time. Our specifications pass tests imposed by rationality and household mobility....

We use metro-level variation in land and structural input prices to test and estimate a housing cost function with differences in local housing productivity. Conditioning on housing demand, OLS and IV estimates imply that stringent regulatory and geographic restrictions increase housing prices...