Photo of Ana M. Aizcorbe.

Senior Research Economist

Ana M. Aizcorbe

Education

Ph.D.
Boston College
Economics
1986
B.A.
Georgetown University
Economics
1980
ASA/NSF/BLS Senior Research Fellow
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, DC
2015
2015
Research Professor
Virginia Tech Social and Decision Analytics Lab, Virginia Tech, Arlington, VA
2013
2016
Chief Economist
Bureau of Economic Analysis, Washington, DC
2008
2013
Economist
Bureau of Economic Analysis, Washington, DC
2003
2008
Economist
Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC
1992
2003
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, DC
Research Economist
1986
1991
Differences in Hedonic and Matched-Model Price Indexes: Do the Weights Matter? pedro.urquilla Thu, 11/30/2017 - 14:51
Working Paper

This note uses scanner data for over 60 segments of consumer information technology (IT) and electronic goods to construct matched-model indexes. Virtually all of the segment-level indexes constructed with these data show price declines that reflect quality increases—a typical exception is floppy disks, a category that shows price declines that reflect falling average prices. Our first pass at these data show that in all but nine of the categories, unweighted geometric mean price indexes falls faster than weighted superlative indexes (Fisher and Tornquist). Part of the reason for this appears to be that, within each segment, goods with relatively low market shares tend to show faster price declines than those with high market shares. Although it would be interesting to explore whether life-cycle effects over the life of each good also contribute to this result, the time-series dimension of our data is short and precludes an analysis of pricing over the product cycle.

Because dummy variable hedonic measures (DV) are also unweighted, our preliminary finding suggests that, all else held equal, DV indexes will tend to show faster price declines than their superlative counterparts. Of course, hedonic techniques arguably do a better job of capturing quality change and will tend to show faster price declines for that reason. Our only point is that maybe the weights matter too.

Ana M. Aizcorbe and Yvon H. Pho

Working Paper ID
WP2005-6
Moore's Law, Competition and Intel's Productivity in the Mid-1990s pedro.urquilla Thu, 11/30/2017 - 14:48
Working Paper

Ana M. Aizcorbe

Working Paper ID
WP2005-8
Associate Editor
Journal of Productivity Analysis
2013
now
Chair, Business and Economic Statistics Section
American Statistical Association
2015
2017
Advisor, National Health Account Group
National Bureau of Economic Research
2008
2014
Advisor
American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics
2012
2014
Advisor
Altarum Institute. Center for Sustainable Health Spending
2010
2016
Abramson Scroll Award
National Association of Business Economists
2008
Research Fellowship Award
Brookings Institution
1984
1985
Teaching Excellence Award
Boston College
1984