"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...

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...