How might in-home scanner technology be used in budget surveys?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We find that levels of spending are significantly lower in scanner data. A large part (but not all) of the gap is explained by weeks in which no spending at all is recorded in scanner data. Demographic differences between the surveys accentuate rather than close the gap. We also demonstrate that patterns of expenditure across the surveys are much more similar, as are Engel curves relating food commodity budget shares to total food expenditures. A key finding is that the period over which we observe households in the scanner data significantly alters the distribution, but not the average, of weekly food expenditures and budget shares, which has important implications for whether two-week spending diaries common to budget surveys are giving a truly accurate reflection of a household's typical spending patterns. A second, more involved use of scanner data would be to impute detailed commodity-level expenditure patterns given only information on total expenditures, as a way of reducing respondent burden in budget surveys. We find that observable demographics in the scanner data explain little of the variation in store-specific expenditure patterns, and so caution against relying too heavily on imputation. Terms of use: Documents inJEL Classifications: C81, C83, D12

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