Initiatives and Related Projects
Some practical applications of our research
Inflacion Verdadera Argentina
A daily inflation index for Argentina. Published from 2007 to 2018 as an alternative to the official CPI which was manipulated by the government during the period 2007-2016. This is how we first started using online prices to measure inflation.
Inflacion Verdadera Venezuela
Our latest project using mobile phones and crowd-sourcing to measure Venezuela’s inflation rate
Online-Offline Comparisons
An attempt to validate online data and better understand how offline pricing behaviors are being affected by the web and mobile browsing/price‐checking technologies.
PriceStats Daily Inflation and PPP Statistics
PriceStats is the company that collects the online prices used by the BPP. It currently publishes daily inflation and PPP indices in over 20 countries. Click here for a historical comparison of the US Online Index and the CPI.
Help us Measure Inflation in Venezuela
We need help collecting and validating prices in Venezuela. Whether you are local or not, you can help.
About US
What we do
The Billion Prices Project is an academic initiative that uses prices collected from hundreds of online retailers around the world on a daily basis to conduct research in macro and international economics. It was founded in 2008 by Alberto Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon. This page shows our most recent research and links to related projects.
Daily Prices
15.000.000
Retailers
More than 1000
Countries with Data
60
Dates
From 2008 on
Our Team
Current team members
Alberto Cavallo
Roberto Rigobon
Maria Fazzolari
Carolina Pizarro
Paula Meloni
Recent Papers
LATEST NEWS
News and Media
The music we listen to can tell us a lot about the state of the economy
Organisations like the Bank and the Office for National Statistics can now draw on exponentially more data to produce their assessments of how the country is performing.
Mapping the economy in real time is almost ‘within our grasp’-Financial Times
The goal of mapping economic activity in real time, just as we do for weather or traffic, is “closer than ever to being within our grasp”, according to Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist.
Can’t Wait a Month for Inflation Data? Daily Gauge Shows Prices in Real Time
PriceStats, based on MIT’s Billion Prices Project, takes a daily temperature using online sales.
Can big data revolutionise policymaking by governments? – Financial Times
Mining digital information for accurate, up-to-date economic snapshots could help officials make quicker and better decisions
Economics in central banking: Alberto Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon – Billion Prices Project/PriceStats – Central Banking
Through a vast and ongoing data-collecting exercise, PriceStats has helped central banks overcome many of the drawbacks inherent in traditional inflation series.
As the Fed Deliberates, Amazon Is Making Its Job More Difficult -Wall Street Journal
The growth of e-commerce is well understood, tracking the smartphone’s ubiquity and a global supply chain that delivers consumer goods quickly and cheaply. Its impact on inflation—the so-called Amazon effect—is still being explored by economists.
An Economist Explains: How to Sort Facts From Fictions – New York Times
In public debates about economic policy, it can be hard to separate real insights from political posturing. But a few simple rules of thumb can help.
Policy analysis with big data -ECB Press
The recent financial crisis, and the euro area sovereign debt crisis that followed, were characterised by periods of increased heterogeneity, market fragmentation and sudden turns in economic activity. This often made it difficult for economic policymakers to understand and assess in real time the underlying forces driving economic behaviour. Both traditional statistical datasets and our
-> Continue reading Policy analysis with big data -ECB Press
Como a América Latina pode superar a inflação, segundo este economista do MIT.- Nexo
Alberto Cavallo ajudou a elaborar uma pesquisa de preços on-line e criou portal que mede as variações na Argentina e Venezuela .
En busca de la (hiper) inflación oculta- El Nacional
La inflación venezolana es de tal magnitud que da para experimentos. En el Instituto Tecnológico de Massachussets, en Estados Unidos, comenzaron uno hace tres meses: medir la inflación, esa que descose los bolsillos de los ciudadanos, con ayuda de los mismos que la padecen.
This is how much Americans would save if they did all their shopping online. – Marketwatch
The purchasing power of one dollar is worth more online, according to software company Adobe’s Digital Price Index, which looked at online and offline spending. If consumers had shifted all of their offline spending last year to online, that difference would have meant saving about $2.2 billion, it estimated.
Prices Keep Falling Faster Online. But for How Long? – Bloomberg Businessweek
New price data from Adobe Systems Inc., released today, show that online increased its price advantage vs. offline over the past two years. Logically speaking, though, the gap can’t keep widening forever. And there are some hints in the data that online’s edge is already—well, not going away, but approaching its limit.
Big data y la ciencia económica – América Economía
Big Data se define como la masividad de datos producidos por interacciones electrónicas a través de teléfonos celulares, transacciones online o redes sociales. Lleva el nombre de “big” por la enorme cantidad de datos que se generan a partir de las interacciones electrónicas entre personas.
El sitio que permite seguir la evolución de la inflación argentina día a día – Infobae.com
En épocas en las que la Argentina atravesaba el “apagón estadístico”, con cifras oficiales adulteradas sobre inflación, pobreza o PBI, el sitio InflaciónVeradera.com fue una referencia para determinar la evolución real de los precios de la economía.
[…]
Intermittent attention, poor memory shape public perceptions of inflation – MIT News
Do you know your country’s current inflation rate? What do you think it will be in the future? And how do you, personally, try to plan your finances accordingly?
Those are important questions for economists and policymakers, because central bankers generally assess future expectations of inflation when setting interest rates.
[…]
Tomorrow’s Prices – An interview with Alberto Cavallo on why consumers have such a hard time thinking about inflation – AEA Web
We see prices every day. Whether we are grocery shopping, going to the movies, or filling up our cars with gas, we notice the prices of what we buy and how they change over time.
[…]
Why the gold price can continue to rise from here
Adrian Ash, of BullionVault, writes exclusively for What Investment on the outlook for the gold price as inflation and interest rates rise.
Alongside Russia-US tensions and crisis-driven spikes in the oil price, suddenly inflation is back making headlines.
[…]
Britain’s inflation data needs to be dragged out of the stone age
Everyone knew something was wrong. Between 2007 and 2011, the Argentine government claimed inflation was running at an average of 8 per cent but the numbers did not tally with what households were experiencing.
[…]
UK prices rising faster after Brexit vote
Statistics imply that real wages may be falling by 0.6% annually – compared with the 0.9% growth rate indicated by official data.
Prices in the UK are now rising at an annual rate of more than 3% in the latest evidence of economic fallout from the EU referendum, according to figures seen by Sky News.
[…]
A billion prices can’t be wrong, by Tim Harford
In the dying days of 2015 came news to set any geek’s pulse racing: the declaration of a “statistical emergency” by Mauricio Macri, the new president of Argentina. Macri’s move enabled Jorge Todesca, head of the statistics bureau, to suspend publication of some basic economic data.
[…]
Prices mostly stay the same whether you shop in store or online
Online shopping is supposed to be a click away from bargains and cheap goods, but this is all a myth, says new research.
A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of 10 countries, including South Africa, has shown that most firms sell their products at the…
[…]
Fudged Numbers Won’t Make the U.S. Grow Faster
The Trump administration has some very optimistic economic targets. It should resist messing with the statistics.
The Soviet Union had a reputation for presenting fake economic statistics to the world, in order to avoid having its dysfunctional system look…
[…]
Online prices cheaper than in store? Not so fast
Standing in the checkout line at Walmart waiting to buy a TV or the latest gadget, one might ponder whether it’s cheaper to buy the same television from Walmart online.
Turns out, it’s probably not.
[…]
Online shopping offers hardly any price advantages
In an average of 72 percent of the cases, there is no price advantage to shop online instead of in the shop – or vice versa. This is the result of a recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after analyzing online and offline prices in ten countries.
[…]
Online and Offline Prices are similar
Alberto Cavallo, Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, explains how online and offline prices compare. Everyone has their own personal opinion, but Prof. Cavallo and his team wanted to collect data in a large number of countries to answer the question with objective evidence.
[…]
MIT Study: Online Retail Prices Often Match Those In Stores
(Newsroom America) — When you buy products online, do you imagine you could get better prices in a store? Conversely, does in-store shopping lead you to wonder whether you are missing better prices online?
Fear not.
[…]
A fair price to pay?
Study shows online retail prices often match store prices — and suggests why they sometimes do not.
When you buy products online, do you imagine you could get better prices in a store?
Fear not.
[…]
Inflation Nation (Part 2) – What does our low inflation environment mean for investors?
Inflation is an average. Prices in some areas are growing quickly, while others fall. That’s the way it has to be in a broadly diversified economy. The broadest measure of inflation – the personal consumption deflator – measures everything that consumers buy, and weights it by how much, then spend on those items.
[…]
Por qué los economistas llegaron tarde al big data
Como esta tecnología ofrece un gran volumen de datos, pero poca información sobre un aspecto particular, se demoró su adopción
“Cuando tenés un martillo todos los problemas se parecen a un clavo”, reza la así llamada ley del instrumento, enunciada por el filósofo americano Abraham Maslow allá por los sesenta en relación a la sobreconfianza en una herramienta, ya sea porque el analista invirtió demasiado en ella o porque está de moda.
[…]
Big Data Driving New Approaches in Econometrics
Data is finance’s new currency, healthcare’s latest wonder drug, and the energy sector’s new oil.
Another day, another Big Data analogy.
All of the hype doesn’t change the fact that businesses across nearly every industry are gaining competitive advantage by extracting value from large datasets.
[…]
Un argentino y un venezolano miden su propia inflación con mil millones de precios por día
Alberto Cavallo y Robert Rigobon, economistas del MIT, comenzaron con la web Inflación Verdadera tras la intervención del Indec, pero ahora estiman la suba de precios todos los días en más de 60 países.
La intervención del Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos (Indec) produjo un giro académico para dos economistas a más de 8.500 kilómetros de distancia.
[…]
BIG DATA SERÁ CLAVE PARA RESOLVER LOS PROBLEMAS COLOMBIANOS
Big Data es una de esos conceptos que suenan muy bien pero que son muy complejos y requieren de amplios conocimientos para su aplicación. Por eso, MIT Y Avanxo se unieron para traer Big Data, Shaping the Future of Latin America a Bogotá el 26 de mayo.
[…]
Online Retail Can’t Rely On Low, Low Prices Anymore
Common sense isn’t so common when retail is still experiencing its fair share of upheavals from each new disruptor to make it to market, but the decade-plus of online and in-store retail operating side by side has established a few new ground rules that almost everyone can agree on.
[…]
Shopping online probably won’t save you money
Online prices are generally the same as prices in the store, survey finds
If you’re a bargain hunter, it’s common to spend time researching prices before making purchases. After all, you wouldn’t want to buy a washing machine at your local Lowes store only to find a lower price offered on Lowes.com.
[…]
MIT Research Finds Online, Offline Pricing Often Identical
Devoted shoppers may spend hours hunting for bargains online. But new research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finds that much of the time — about 72%, in fact — prices are identical to those in stores.
[…]
Argentina’s Triumphant Return To International Capital Markets
Earlier this month, Argentina issued $16.5 billion in bonds in the largest emerging market debt deal on record, effectively returning to international capital markets for the first time after a following a plague of defaults over the past 15 years under the Christina Kirchner administration.
[…]
MIT Sloan Professor Finds Online And Offline Prices Identical 72% Of The Time
Many shoppers assume that online prices are lower than in-store prices. However, a recent study by MIT Sloan Prof. Alberto Cavallo found that prices are actually identical about 72% of the time for products sold both online and offline.
[…]
Difference between in-store, online prices probably not what you think
MIT Sloan study reveals information of use to consumers and economists
Sure, online shopping is generally more convenient than going to the store for your purchases, but prices are pretty much the same three quarters of the time, according to a new MIT study.
[…]
If you think online prices are cheaper than offline, think again
Technically Incorrect: An MIT professor conducts a worldwide analysis of prices online and off. The results might surprise some.
Amazon has educated me in so many ways.It’s taught me that the “Lord of the Flies” was an excellent management book.It’s also taught me to believe that online prices are cheaper than those in stores.
[…]
Cheaper online? Maybe not, says MIT prof
Everybody knows that everyday products cost less when purchased online. Everybody except Albert Cavallo, that is.
[…]
Shopping online is saving you less than you thought
You find lower prices online than at bricks-and-mortar stores, right? Wrong.
Alberto Cavallo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology displayed resourcefulness and ingenuity by producing a wide-scale international comparison of online and offline prices at “brick-and-motar” stores.
[…]
Why shopping online at Coles is more expensive than in stores
Coles shoppers are paying a hefty premium on some groceries when they shop online and use the supermarket’s supposedly free “click and collect” service or home delivery.
Fairfax Media compared in-store and online prices on 10 popular brand label items at Coles and found eight of them were 10 per cent more expensive for online shoppers.
[…]
What’s cheaper: Buying online or in-store? The answer will surprise you
Shopping online is cheaper right? Think again. Big data has helped challenge that conventional wisdom.
Alberto Cavallo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has undertaken a huge, international comparison of the “online and offline” prices charged by big retailers.
[…]
Shopping online may not save you anything
You find lower prices online than at bricks-and-mortar stores, right? Wrong.
Alberto Cavallo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology displayed resourcefulness and ingenuity by producing a wide-scale international comparison of online and offline prices.
[…]
Free Lunch: Straggling towards restructuring
Public debt in a court of (dumb) law
The parallels between Greece and Puerto Rico, which we have noted before, continue to evolve, but now a political dimension has been added to the economic one. The economic problem has to do with the combination of a public debt overhang and a shrinking population and economy.
[…]
An Augean stable
The government is rebuilding its discredited statistics institute
GOVERNMENT bean-counters do not, in most countries, have a reputation for derring-do. But in Argentina some have proved to be martyrs and heroes.
[…]
‘Microdata’ Give Boost to Economic Decisionmakers
-Microdata allow users to analyze policy impact
-Trustworthy, informative, and accessible data fundamental to good policy decisions
-Legal frameworks necessary to balance confidentiality and access to microdata
[…]