Saturday, April 16, 2011

What consumer prices are really doing

 The MIT Billion Price Project

http://bpp.mit.edu/daily-price-indexes/

MIT Billion Prices Project US Inflation Chart - click to enlarge


Data collection: our data are collected every day from online retailers using a software that scans the underlying code in public webpages and stores the relevant price information in a database. The resulting dataset contains daily prices on the full array of products sold by these retailers. Our data include information on product descriptions, package sizes, brands, special characteristics (e.g. “organic”), and whether the item is on sale or price control. 
BPP Database Key Facts
-Statistics updated every day
-5 million individual items
-70 countries
-Started in October of 2007
-Supermarkets, electronics, apparel, furniture, real estate, and more

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