The Impact of New Varieties on Domestic and International Prices

宏观经济学、国际经济学和城市经济学面临的最重要的计量挑战之一是如何在品种出现和消失时正确计量总价格。 我们早就知道，产品的创造和破坏对我们的生活水平产生了深远的影响。一个适当的生活成本指数将衡量维持一定水平的效用所需的支出，因此应该反映新的（和不同的）商品的发明，即使新商品的售价与现有商品相同。然而，世界各地的统计机构计算价格指数的公式并没有反映这一影响。 该项目旨在解决消费者支出中很大一部分的这一问题。具体来说，这项研究将获得第一个结构性估计的品种和质量的增长对价格和福利的影响，在广泛的产品。主要目标是生成一个基于公用事业的总价格指数，该指数可用作基准，以更好地了解美国和其他国家如何从消费者可获得的品种增加中受益。 这项工作的一个主要部分包括使用一个新的数据库，为构成美国CPI的大部分商品提供子品牌级数据。 研究人员打算从沿着两个方面来探讨这些收益。消费者增加商品选择的一个途径是通过国际贸易。与其他国家的贸易使消费者能够从国内无法获得的各种商品中进行选择。在过去的几十年里，有证据表明，交易品种的数量出现了惊人的增长。美国进口的品种数量-定义为从特定出口国进口特定的10位数HTS商品-增加了四倍。此外，对更多国家的初步结果表明，在快速增长和自由化国家中，进口品种有了巨大增长。交易品种的激增提出了两个重要问题，调查人员试图回答：1）世界各地的传统进口价格指数在多大程度上高估了进口价格通胀，而没有考虑新商品和品种？2）进口品种的增长对世界贸易有什么好处？ 品种增长的第二个来源来自国内品种的增加。该项目旨在计算各种调整后的总价格指数，涵盖美国消费者可获得的大约25%的商品。使用一个独特的数据库，使我们能够访问整个宇宙的包装商品（即，超过200万件通用产品代码商品），调查人员将每年或每季度在产品层面描述产品制造和销毁的程度。此外，在这一聚合水平上的价格和数量的可用性将使研究人员能够计算新的国内品种的价格和福利影响。更广泛的影响：研究人员打算通过发表文章和参加会议来传播本研究的结果。此外，研究人员将提供一个具有替代弹性的数据集，并在网站上向研究人员提供弹性。调查人员已经从他们对美国的工作中收到了大量关于弹性的要求，并认为这些估计值具有巨大的兴趣。他们打算将他们的数据和参数估计提供给未来的研究人员。第三，调查人员还发现，媒体对了解多样性的收益有着巨大的兴趣，并认为他们的结果可能会被广泛报道。最后，调查人员计划与统计机构和货币当局合作，帮助改善价格衡量和政策制定。 这项研究也将具有跨学科/跨机构的层面。首先，部分工作将与匹兹堡超级计算中心合作进行。此外，部分研究将在纽约联邦储备银行进行。 这将有助于银行努力改善货币政策的形成。

One of the most important measurement challenges facing macroeconomics, international economics and urban economics concerns how to properly measure aggregate prices when varieties appear and disappear. We have long known that the creation and destruction of products exerts a profound impact on our standard of living. A proper cost-of-living index would measure the expenditure needed to maintain a certain level of utility and therefore should reflect the invention of new (and different) goods even if the new items sell for the same price as existing ones. Statistical agencies around the world, however, compute price indices from formulas that do not capture this effect. This project aims to solve this problem for a substantial share of consumer expenditure. Specifically, this research will obtain the first structural estimate of the impact of variety and quality growth on prices and welfare across a broad range of products. The main objective is to generate a utility-based aggregate price index that can be used as a benchmark to better understand how the US and other countries have benefited from the increase in varieties available to consumers. A major part of this effort includes the use of a new database that provides sub-brand-level data for a large fraction of the goods that comprise the US CPI. The investigators intend to explore these gains along two dimensions. One way in which consumers can increase their choice of goods is through international trade. Trade with other nations allows consumers to choose from a variety of goods that are not available to them domestically. Over the last several decades there is evidence of spectacular growth in the number of traded varieties. The number of varieties imported by the U.S. -defined as the import of a particular 10-digit HTS good from a particular exporting country - has risen by a factor of four. Furthermore, preliminary results for a wider range of countries suggest enormous growth in imported varieties among fast growing and liberalizing countries. This explosion in traded varieties raises two important questions that the investigators seek to answer: 1) How much do conventional import price indexes around the world overstate import price inflation by not taking new goods and varieties into account? and 2) What are the world gains from trade from the growth in imported varieties? A second source of variety growth comes from the increase of domestic varieties. This project aims to compute a variety adjusted aggregate price index that covers roughly 25 percent of the goods available to US consumers. Using a unique database that gives us access to the whole universe of packaged goods (i.e., over 2 million Universal Product Code goods), the investigators will describe the extent of product creation and destruction at the product level on an annual or quarterly frequency. Furthermore, the availability of price and quantity at this level of aggregation will allow the investigators to calculate the price and welfare impact of new domestic varieties.Broader Impacts: The investigators intend to disseminate the results from this research through the publication of articles and the participation in conferences. In addition, the investigators will make available a dataset with elasticities of substitution as well as supply elasticities available to researchers on a website. The investigators have already had a large number of requests for elasticities from their work on the US and believe that there is enormous interest in these estimates. They intend to make their data and parameter estimates available to future researchers. Third, the investigators have also discovered that there is enormous media interest in understanding the gains from variety and believe that their results are likely to be widely reported. Finally, the investigators plan to work with statistical agencies and monetary authorities to help improve the measurement of prices and formulation of policy. This research will also have a cross-disciplinary/cross-institutional dimension as well. First, some of the work will be performed in cooperation with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. In addition, a part of the research will be conducted at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This will aid the bank in its efforts to improve the formation of monetary policy.