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Can Chained Price Deflators for High‐Tech Goods Overstate Quality Change?

Ana Aizcorbe & Daniel Ripperger‐Suhler

Review of Income and Wealth2026https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.70054article
AJG 3
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

This paper argues that chained price indexes for IT goods will typically not account for quality change properly, a problem we call commingling. We illustrate the problem by comparing a chained index to the weighted time product dummy index, where we argue that the latter does not commingle. A comparison of these indexes suggests that the patterns typically seen in prices and expenditure shares over these goods' lifecycles can push the chained Törnqvist index to fall faster than the WTPD index. Our empirical work uses scanner data for five electronic goods and shows that (1) goods in four of our categories display the emblematic patterns (calculators were the exception) and (2) three of those display chained Tornquist indexes that fall substantially faster than the WTPD index (tablets were the exception).

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.70054

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@article{ana2026,
  title        = {{Can Chained Price Deflators for High‐Tech Goods Overstate Quality Change?}},
  author       = {Ana Aizcorbe & Daniel Ripperger‐Suhler},
  journal      = {Review of Income and Wealth},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.70054},
}

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Can Chained Price Deflators for High‐Tech Goods Overstate Quality Change?

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.