IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2022-204.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Updating Inflation Weights in the UK and Germany during COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Francesco Grigoli
  • Evgenia Pugacheva

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic altered consumption patterns significantly in a short period of time. However, official inflation statistics take time to reflect these changes in the weights of the CPI consumption basket. Using credit card data for the UK and Germany, we document how consumption patterns changed and we quantify the resulting inflation bias. We find that consumers experienced a higher level of inflation at the beginning of the pandemic than what a fixed-weight inflation (or the official-weight) index suggests and a lower inflation thereafter. We also show that weights can differ among age groups as well as between in-person and online spenders. These differences affect the purchasing power of the population heterogeneously. We conclude that CPI inflation indexes based on frequently updated weights can provide useful inputs to assess changes in the cost of living and, if shifts in consumption patterns prove persistent, determine the need to introduce new official weights and inform monetary policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Francesco Grigoli & Evgenia Pugacheva, 2022. "Updating Inflation Weights in the UK and Germany during COVID-19," IMF Working Papers 2022/204, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2022/204
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=524045
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benchimol Jonathan & Caspi Itamar & Levin Yuval, 2022. "The COVID-19 Inflation Weighting in Israel," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 5-14, June.
    2. Alcedo, Joel & Cavallo, Alberto & Dwyer, Bricklin & Mishra, Prachi & Spilimbergo, Antonio, 2022. "E-commerce During Covid: Stylized Facts from 47 Economies," CEPR Discussion Papers 17001, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Joel Alcedo & Alberto Cavallo & Bricklin Dwyer & Prachi Mishra & Antonio Spilimbergo, 2022. "Back to Trend: COVID Effects on E-commerce in 47 Countries," NBER Working Papers 29729, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Alberto Cavallo, 2024. "Inflation with Covid Consumption Baskets," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 72(2), pages 902-917, June.
    5. Scott R Baker & Robert A Farrokhnia & Steffen Meyer & Michaela Pagel & Constantine Yannelis & Jeffrey Pontiff, 0. "How Does Household Spending Respond to an Epidemic? Consumption during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 834-862.
    6. W. Erwin Diewert & Kevin J. Fox, 2020. "Measuring Real Consumption and CPI Bias under Lockdown Conditions," NBER Working Papers 27144, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Pascal Seiler, 2020. "Weighting bias and inflation in the time of COVID-19: evidence from Swiss transaction data," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 156(1), pages 1-11, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pallotti, Filippo & Paz-Pardo, Gonzalo & Slacalek, Jiri & Tristani, Oreste & Violante, Giovanni L., 2023. "Who bears the costs of inflation? Euro area households and the 2021–2022 shock," Working Paper Series 2877, European Central Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grigoli, Francesco & Pugacheva, Evgenia, 2024. "COVID-19 inflation weights in the UK and Germany," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    2. Santiago E. Alvarez & Sarah M. Lein, 2020. "Tracking inflation on a daily basis," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 156(1), pages 1-13, December.
    3. Jaravel, Xavier & O'Connell, Martin, 2020. "Real-time price indices: Inflation spike and falling product variety during the Great Lockdown," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    4. Xavier Jaravel & Martin O'Connell, 2020. "High‐Frequency Changes in Shopping Behaviours, Promotions and the Measurement of Inflation: Evidence from the Great Lockdown," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 733-755, September.
    5. Jaravel, Xavier & O'Connell, Martin, 2020. "Inflation Spike and Falling Product Variety during the Great Lockdown," CEPR Discussion Papers 14880, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Huw Dixon & Aftab Chowdhury, 2023. "Energy Expenditures and CPI Inflation in 2022: Inflation Was Even Higher Than We Thought," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 550, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    7. Pascal Seiler, 2020. "Weighting bias and inflation in the time of COVID-19: evidence from Swiss transaction data," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 156(1), pages 1-11, December.
    8. Hindriks, Jean & Madio, Leonardo & Serse, Valerio, 2021. "Promotion ban and heterogeneity in retail prices during the Great Lockdown," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2021005, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    9. Joël Cariolle & Florian Léon, 2022. "How internet helped firms to cope with COVID-19," Working Papers hal-03592617, HAL.
    10. Witold Chmielarz & Marek Zborowski & Xuetao Jin & Mesut Atasever & Justyna Szpakowska, 2022. "On a Comparative Analysis of Individual Customer Purchases on the Internet for Poland, Turkey and the People’s Republic of China at the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-21, June.
    11. Liviu Andrei Toader & Dorel Mihai Paraschiv & Florentina Chițu, 2023. "The Effects of Individuals’ Levels of Computer Skills on the ICT Sector Employment in the European Union during the COVID-19 Pandemics," Romanian Economic Journal, Department of International Business and Economics from the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, vol. 26(85), pages 67-77, June.
    12. David R Baqaee & Ariel Burstein, 2023. "Welfare and Output With Income Effects and Taste Shocks," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(2), pages 769-834.
    13. Xu, Yingying & Lien, Donald, 2022. "Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on price Co-movements in China," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    14. Axenbeck, Janna & Bertschek, Irene & Breithaupt, Patrick & Erdsiek, Daniel, 2023. "Firm digitalisation and mobility - Do Covid-19-related changes persist?," ZEW Discussion Papers 23-011, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    15. Martin Brown & Matthias R. Fengler & Jonas Huwyler & Winfried Koeniger & Rafael Lalive & Robert Rohrkemper, 2023. "Monitoring consumption Switzerland: data, background, and use cases," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 159(1), pages 1-16, December.
    16. Mario J. Crucini & Oscar O'Flaherty, 2020. "Stay-at-Home Orders in a Fiscal Union," NBER Working Papers 28182, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Kahr, Michael, 2022. "Determining locations and layouts for parcel lockers to support supply chain viability at the last mile," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    18. Alberto Cavallo, 2024. "Inflation with Covid Consumption Baskets," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 72(2), pages 902-917, June.
    19. Byron Botha & Rulof Burger & Kevin Kotzé & Neil Rankin & Daan Steenkamp, 2023. "Big data forecasting of South African inflation," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 65(1), pages 149-188, July.
    20. CSORBA Luiela Magdalena & JURAVLE Damaris Judita, 2022. "Study Regarding The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Inflation In Romania In The 2019 - 2020 Period," Revista Economica, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 74(1), pages 51-64, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2022/204. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.