Every time you buy a can of tuna or a new television, its bar code is scanned to record its price and other information. These "scanner data" offer a number of attractive features for economists and statisticians, because they are collected continuously, are available quickly, and record prices...

"The measurement infrastructure for the production of economic statistics in the United States largely was established in the middle part of the 20th century. As has been noted by a number of commentators, the data landscape has changed in fundamental ways since this infrastructure was...