Online and official price indexes: Measuring Argentina's inflation
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
Abstract
Prices collected from online retailers can be used to construct daily price indexes that complement official statistics. This paper studies their ability to match official inflation estimates in five Latin American countries, with a focus on Argentina, where official statistics have been heavily criticized in recent years. The data were collected between October 2007 and March 2011 from the largest supermarket in each country. In Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela, online price indexes approximate both the level and main dynamics of official inflation. By contrast, Argentina's online inflation rate is nearly three times higher than the official estimate.