Measuring consumer inflation in a digital economy

Abstract

MEASURING CONSUMER INFLATION IN A DIGITAL ECONOMY Unclassified OECD STATISTICS WORKING PAPER SERIES The OECD Statistics Working Paper Seriesmanaged by the OECD Statistics and Data Directorateis designed to make available in a timely fashion and to a wider readership selected studies prepared by OECD staff or by outside consultants working on OECD projects. The papers included are of a technical, methodological or statistical policy nature and relate to statistical work relevant to the Organisation. The Working Papers are generally available only in their original language-English or Frenchwith a summary in the other. OECD Working Papers should not be reported as representing the official views of the OECD or of its member countries and should not be attributed to the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management. The opinions expressed and arguments employed are those of the authors. Working Papers describe preliminary results or research in progress by the authors and are published to stimulate discussion on a broad range of issues on which the OECD works. Comments on Working Papers are welcomed, and may be sent to the Statistics and Data Directorate, OECD,

Towards Improved and Comparable Productivity Statistics

“…However, these gains from digitalisation have not yet materialised, with productivity growth in most of the world having been relatively subdued since the 2008 financial crisis or even prior to this, raising a number of open questions, regarding potential lagged effects of these new technologies, structural versus cyclical factors and, of course, measurement. While a growing body of evidence suggests that measurement, or rather "mis-measurement", is not the primary cause (Syverson, 2016;Byrne, Fernald and Reinsdorf, 2016;Ahmad et al, 2017;Reinsdorf and Schreyer, 2019), many challenges remain in the practical measurement of the digital economy, including its inclusion in both GDP and productivity.…”