Seiler Pascal
ETH Zurich, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, Leonhardstrasse 21, Zurich, CH-8092 Switzerland.
https://www.pascalseiler.ch.
Swiss J Econ Stat. 2020;156(1):13. doi: 10.1186/s41937-020-00057-7. Epub 2020 Sep 16.
Sharp changes in consumer expenditure may bias inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using public data from debit card transactions, I quantify these changes in consumer spending, update CPI basket weights and construct an alternative price index to measure the effect of the COVID-induced weighting bias on the Swiss consumer price index. I find that inflation was higher during the lock-down than suggested by CPI inflation. The annual inflation rate of the COVID price index was -0.4 by April 2020, compared to -1.1 of the equivalent CPI. Persistent "low-touch" consumer behavior can further lead to inflation being underestimated by more than a quarter of a percentage point until the end of 2020.
在新冠疫情期间,消费者支出的急剧变化可能会使通货膨胀率出现偏差。利用借记卡交易的公开数据,我对消费者支出的这些变化进行了量化,更新了消费价格指数(CPI)篮子权重,并构建了一个替代价格指数,以衡量新冠疫情导致的权重偏差对瑞士消费者价格指数的影响。我发现,在封锁期间通货膨胀率高于消费价格指数通胀所显示的水平。到2020年4月,新冠价格指数的年通货膨胀率为-0.4%,而同期消费价格指数的年通货膨胀率为-1.1%。持续的“低接触”消费行为可能进一步导致通货膨胀率在2020年底前被低估超过0.25个百分点。