Online Prices for Computing Standards of Living Across Countries (OPSLAC)

计算各国生活水平的在线价格 (OPSLAC)

• 批准号: 1724649
• 负责人: Robert Feenstra
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: University of California-Davis
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-03-15 至 2020-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1724649&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Online; Prices; Computing; Standards; Living

Comparison of economic progress across countries requires that calculation across countries of real gross domestic product (GDP) in a common currency, i.e. U.S. dollars. The calculation of real GDP per capita, which is made by the World Bank, is much the same as the calculation needed to obtain an extreme poverty line of $1.90 per day: both calculations must convert spending in a local currency into spending in U.S. dollars. Nominal exchange rates cannot be used for this purpose because they do not take into account the price levels existing in each country. In particular, converting the spending in developing countries into U.S. dollars with nominal exchange rates makes poor counties appear even poorer and rich countries even richer. Instead, it is essential to correct for the lower prices found in poor countries as compared to rich countries. This project studies the feasibility of using "Big Data" methods and online prices to convert spending across countries into a common currency (U.S. dollars), and to establish extreme poverty lines in a common currency (e.g. $1.90 per day). The source of internet price data is the Billion Prices Project (BPP), an academic initiative associated with Alberto Cavallo, one of the principal investigators. The BPP has access to global price information at a very fine level of detail, as is essential in order to compare price for the same goods (e.g. Arabica coffee beans) across countries. These online prices have the potential to improve both the frequency and accuracy of price observations in comparison to traditional price data collection methods, For example, the World Bank currently engages in a labor-intensive collection of prices across countries in what is called the International Comparisons Project (ICP). Because it involves actual visits to stores in so many countries, the ICP can collect prices only at infrequent intervals (the most recent years were 2005 and 2011, with another collection planned for 2017). Furthermore, traditional data collection methods require the cooperation of local statistical agencies and their adherence to strict quality and methodological standards that are often impossible to control. The results will be valuable for the World Bank and other international agencies engaged in measuring real GDP and extreme poverty; for policy-makers that rely on accuracy of these measurements to design and implement solutions; for the work of academics engaged in the Penn World Tables and related international comparison databases; and for scholars from Economics, Political Science, and other disciplines who rely on the measurement of real GDP in various countries. The main goals of this project are to: a) utilize "Big Data" internet sources from the Billion Prices Project to obtain a database of average online prices for comparable products across countries that is independent of the methods used to collect prices by the World Bank; b) to use this online price information to construct measures of the standard of living across countries that can be compared to those from the World Bank, but which will potentially differ due to the new sources of price data; and c) do this at a monthly frequency, rather than once every 6 years, to more accurately track and pinpoint changes in prices and living standards. Large-scale micro-price data from various sources (government surveys, scanner datasets, or web-scraped online sources) have become available for researchers in recent years, but they are not yet suited for comparing prices across countries because prices are not collected according to the same classification or identification system and use differing price collection methods can invalidate international comparisons. The approach will be to access the large-scale, multi-country dataset of prices available at the BPP, build a standardized method for matching products across countries, and develop an appropriate methodology to scale up from individual product prices to an overall consumer price comparison. The project will focus on key practical and methodological issues and lay the groundwork for the use of online price data in research applications that make cost-of-living comparisons across countries. The research will be published in academic papers and the researchers will also publish a monthly database of average price levels in various countries computed during the duration of the project. The investigators will share this database publicly with other researchers via data depositories such as the Harvard/MIT Dataverse. The website of the Penn World Table (www.ggdc.net/pwt) will also provide a platform for disseminating the results from integrating online price information with other macroeconomic data series.This award was made as part of Round 4 of the Digging Into Data Challenge, an international funding opportunity designed to foster research collaboration across countries and to encourage innovative approaches to analyzing large data sets in the social sciences and humanities. The U.S based researchers will collaborate with scholars in Canada and the Netherlands to achieve the goals of this project.

要比较各国的经济进步，就需要以一种共同货币，即美元，计算各国的真实的国内生产总值。世界银行对人均真实的国内生产总值的计算方法与获得每天1.90美元的极端贫困线所需的计算方法大致相同：两种计算方法都必须将当地货币支出转换为美元支出。名义汇率不能用于这一目的，因为它们没有考虑到每个国家现有的价格水平。特别是将发展中国家的支出按名义汇率换算成美元，穷国显得更穷，富国显得更富。相反，必须纠正穷国的价格低于富国的情况。该项目研究利用“大数据”方法和网上价格将各国的支出转换为一种共同货币（美元）的可行性，并以一种共同货币（如每天1.90美元）确定极端贫困线。互联网价格数据的来源是十亿价格项目（BPP），这是一个与主要调查人员之一阿尔贝托卡瓦洛有关的学术倡议。BPP可以获得非常详细的全球价格信息，这对于比较各国相同商品（如阿拉比卡咖啡豆）的价格至关重要。与传统的价格数据收集方法相比，这些在线价格有可能提高价格观察的频率和准确性，例如，世界银行目前在所谓的国际比较项目（ICP）中从事劳动密集型的国家间价格收集。由于它涉及到对许多国家的商店的实际访问，比较方案只能偶尔收集价格（最近的几年是2005年和2011年，计划在2017年再收集一次）。此外，传统的数据收集方法需要地方统计机构的合作，并要求它们遵守往往无法控制的严格的质量和方法标准。其结果对世界银行和其他参与计量真实的国内总产值和赤贫的国际机构、对依靠这些计量的准确性来设计和执行解决办法的决策者、对参与宾州世界表和有关国际比较数据库的学术界的工作都将是有价值的;以及来自经济学、政治学和其他学科的学者，他们依赖于各国真实的GDP的测量。该项目的主要目标是：（a）利用十亿价格项目的“大数据”互联网来源，获得一个独立于世界银行收集价格方法的各国可比产品平均在线价格数据库; B）利用这一在线价格信息构建各国生活水平的衡量标准，并与世界银行的数据进行比较，但由于新的价格数据来源，这可能会有所不同;以及c）每月一次，而不是每六年一次，以便更准确地跟踪和查明价格和生活水平的变化。近年来，研究人员可以从各种来源（政府调查、扫描数据集或网络抓取的在线来源）获得大规模微观价格数据，但这些数据尚不适合比较各国的价格，因为价格不是根据相同的分类或识别系统收集的，使用不同的价格收集方法可能使国际比较无效。方法是利用BPP提供的大规模多国价格数据集，建立一个标准化的方法来匹配各国的产品，并制定一个适当的方法，从个别产品价格扩大到整体消费价格比较。该项目将侧重于关键的实际问题和方法问题，并为在比较各国生活费用的研究应用中使用在线价格数据奠定基础。研究结果将以学术论文的形式发表，研究人员还将每月公布一个在项目期间计算的各国平均价格水平数据库。研究人员将通过数据存储库（如哈佛/麻省理工学院数据库）与其他研究人员公开共享该数据库。Penn World Table网站（www.ggdc.net/pwt）还将提供一个平台，用于传播将在线价格信息与其他宏观经济数据系列整合的结果。该奖项是第四轮数据挖掘挑战赛的一部分，一个国际资助机会，旨在促进各国之间的研究合作，并鼓励创新方法来分析社会科学中的大型数据集和人文学科。美国的研究人员将与加拿大和荷兰的学者合作，以实现该项目的目标。

项目成果

Using Online Prices for Measuring Real Consumption across Countries

使用在线价格衡量各国的实际消费

• DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20181037
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: AEA Papers and Proceedings
• 作者: Cavallo, Alberto;Diewert, W. Erwin;Feenstra, Robert C.;Inklaar, Robert;Timmer, Marcel P.
• 通讯作者: Timmer, Marcel P.