Abstract
The paper discusses new opportunities for Russian price statistics that present-day information and communication technologies bring about. The paper is a response to the study Isakov et al. (2021) dedicated to the effort of developing a toolset to build a price quotation database through automated internet data collection and construction of consumer price indexes based on it. Discussed are the potential implications of this activity for price statistics.
Highlights
Advances in information and telecommunication technologies have in recent years led to a sharp rise in online sales, propelling this hitherto exotic retail channel to establish itself as a leader within a short space of time
The coronavirus that emerged in 2020 gave further impetus to this process. Moving forward, this sales channel is certain to gain further ground. These technologies can help set up a system of automated price quotation collection and other data collection to construct consumer price indexes (CPIs)
Considering that consumer price indexes are built on the system of weights put in place before the crisis,9 these changes in spending patterns are not recognised in the index construction process
Summary
Advances in information and telecommunication technologies have in recent years led to a sharp rise in online sales (or sales involving the internet), propelling this hitherto exotic retail channel to establish itself as a leader within a short space of time. Moving forward, this sales channel is certain to gain further ground These technologies can help set up a system of automated price quotation collection and other data collection to construct consumer price indexes (CPIs). The volumes of data immediately available are rising sharply as the costs of their collection are dramatically declining This suggests that new technologies are set to destroy the age-old monopoly of national statistical services on building price statistics indicators of acceptable quality. 120–126 less important that new technologies open up new development opportunities for price statistics and inflation process analysis. All this calls for a discussion and thorough understanding. We discuss what substantive implications this activity may have for Russian consumer price statistics and what opportunities it opens up
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