Policy analysis frequently requires estimates of aggregate (or mean) consumer elasticities. However, estimates are often made incorrectly, based on elasticity calculations at mean income. We provide in this paper an overall integrated analytical framework that encompasses these biases and...

Consumer-related policy decisions often require analysis of aggregate responses or mean elasticities. However, in practice these mean elasticities are seldom used. Mean elasticities can be approximated using aggregate data, but that introduces aggregation bias for full and compensated price...

The share of private consumption in gross domestic product is significant; therefore, private consumption has a great influence on economic growth, which makes it a major concept in economics. The purpose of the paper is to estimate and evaluate different forecasting models for private...

This study proposes a new measure of the tradability of 120+ commodities based on price dispersion. This approach is used to construct price indices of tradables and non-tradables for 150+ countries. The expenditure share of tradables is lower for richer countries, while the relative price of...

Narrow and broad money measures (including Divisia aggregates) have been found to have explanatory power for UK output in backward-looking specifications of the IS curve. In this paper, we explore whether or not real balances enter into a forward-looking IS curve for the UK, building on the...

Sharp changes in consumer expenditure may bias inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using public data from debit card transactions, I quantify these changes in consumer spending, update CPI basket weights and construct an alternative price index to measure the effect of the COVID-induced...

We create a new weekly index of retail trade that accurately predicts the U.S. Census Bureau's Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS). The index's weekly frequency provides an early snapshot of the MRTS and allows for a more granular analysis of the aggregate consumer response to fast-moving events...

The presented considerations are an attempt to verify the possibility of using input-output tables for modeling and, as a consequence, to forecast inflation. The study is a continuation of previous simulation experiments performed on a limited statistical material. The study uses input-output...

The Hamilton method for estimating CPI bias is simple, intuitive, and has been widely adopted. We show that the method confiates CPI bias with variation in cost-of-living across income levels. Assuming a single price index across the income distribution is inconsistent with the downward sloping...

The paper provides a rigorous derivation of the "welfare triangle approximation" (WTA), which is at the center of cost benefit analysis. The result is generalized by showing that the WTA is one of two dual expressions, one of which approximates the change in real consumption, the other the...