We are pleased to alert you to ISS working paper 693, entitled Using online prices for inflation estimation and pricing behaviour research: a case study from Vietnamese multichannel retailers during the COVID-19 pandemic, by Hoa Ngo, the Jos Mooij Research Paper Award winner for the academic year 2020-2021.
Abstract
This thesis examines the potential of using online pricing data from multichannel retailers for economic research during the pandemic time. It describes the method of collecting data through web-scraping techniques in two of the largest retailers in Vietnam during its first “true” wave of COVID-19 in 2021 and discusses the benefits and challenges of this approach. Data were collected daily across 167 days and from 2,398 product items, for a total of 396,335 observations. Despite limitations such as the short time frame of the research and the fluctuations in the number of data points gathered during the lock-down, the thesis shows that the online price index is capable of tracking the inflation dynamics during the pandemic. The approach can be helpful when price data cannot be collected in person due to lockdowns. Regressions of price dynamics on pandemic variables indicate that the pandemic trajectory, including the total number of vaccinations and the lockdown measures, correlates strongly with the discounting benefits consumers can enjoy, particularly on essential products like foods. Still, no evidence for the correlation between pandemic variables and inflation has been found within the scope of this research.
Keywords
Inflation, online price index, e-commerce, multichannel retailers, pricing behaviour, pandemic, Vietnam.
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