Big Data for Twenty-First-Century Economic Statistics

Katharine G. Abraham is professor of economics and survey methodology at the University of Maryland and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Ron S. Jarmin is deputy director and chief operating officer of the United States Census Bureau. Brian C. Moyer is director of the National Center for Health Statistics. Matthew D. Shapiro is the Lawrence R. Klein Collegiate Professor of Economics and director and research professor of the Survey Research Center, both at the University of Michigan, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Prefatory Note
Introduction: Big Data for Twenty- First- Century Economic Statistics: The Future Is Now
Katherine G. Abraham, Ron S. Jarmin, Brian C. Moyer, and Matthew D. Shapiro

I. TOWARD COMPREHENSIVE USE OF BIG DATA IN ECONOMIC STATISTICS
1. Reengineering Key National Economic Indicators
Gabriel Ehrlich, John C. Haltiwanger, Ron S. Jarmin, David Johnson, and Matthew D. Shapiro

2. Big Data in the US Consumer Price Index: Experiences and Plans
Crystal G. Konny, Brendan K. Williams, and David M. Friedman

3. Improving Retail Trade Data Products Using Alternative Data Sources
Rebecca J. Hutchinson

4. From Transaction Data to Economic Statistics: Constructing Real-Time, High-Frequency, Geographic Measures of Consumer Spending
Aditya Aladangady, Shifrah Aron-Dine, Wendy Dunn, Laura Feiveson, Paul Lengermann, and Claudia Sahm

5. Improving the Accuracy of Economic Measurement with Multiple Data Sources: The Case of Payroll Employment Data
Tomaz Cajner, Leland D. Crane, Ryan A. Decker, Adrian Hamins-Puertolas, and Christopher Kurz

II. USES OF BIG DATA FOR CLASSIFICATION
6. Transforming Naturally Occurring Text Data into Economic Statistics: The Case of Online Job Vacancy Postings
Arthur Turrell, Bradley Speigner, Jyldyz Djumalieva, David Copple, and James Thurgood

7. Automating Response Evaluation for Franchising Questions on the 2017 Economic Census
Joseph Staudt, Yifang Wei, Lisa Singh, Shawn Klimek, J. Bradford Jensen, and Andrew Baer

8. Using Public Data to Generate Industrial Classification Codes
John Cuffe, Sudip Bhattacharjee, Ugochukwu Etudo, Justin C. Smith, Nevada Basdeo, Nathaniel Burbank, and Shawn R. Roberts

III. USES OF BIG DATA FOR SECTORAL MEASUREMENT
9. Nowcasting the Local Economy: Using Yelp Data to Measure Economic Activity
Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim, and Michael Luca

10. Unit Values for Import and Export Price Indexes: A Proof of Concept
Don A. Fast and Susan E. Fleck

11. Quantifying Productivity Growth in the Delivery of Important Episodes of Care within the Medicare Program Using Insurance Claims and Administrative Data
John A. Romley, Abe Dunn, Dana Goldman, and Neeraj Sood

12. Valuing Housing Services in the Era of Big Data: A User Cost Approach Leveraging Zillow Microdata
Marina Gindelsky, Jeremy G. Moulton, and Scott A. Wentland

IV. METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES AND ADVANCES
13. Off to the Races: A Comparison of Machine Learning and Alternative Data for Predicting Economic Indicators
Jeffrey C. Chen, Abe Dunn, Kyle Hood, Alexander Driessen, and Andrea Batch

14. A Machine Learning Analysis of Seasonal and Cyclical Sales in Weekly Scanner Data
Rishab Guha and Serena Ng

15. Estimating the Benefits of New Products
W. Erwin Diewert and Robert C. Feenstra

Contributors
Author Index
Subject Index