Rising consumer prices may reflect shifts by consumers to new higher-priced products, mostly for durable and semi-durable goods. I apply Bils' (2009) methodology to newly available Canadian consumer price data for non-shelter goods and services to estimate how price increases can be divided...

We use a detailed micro dataset on product availability to construct a direct high frequency measure of consumer product shortages during the 2020-21 pandemic. We document a widespread multi-fold rise in shortages in nearly all sectors early in the pandemic. Over time, the composition of...

Inflation equals the product of two terms: an extensive margin (the fraction of items with price changes) and an intensive margin (the average size of those price changes). The variance of inflation over time can be decomposed into contributions from each margin. The extensive margin figures...