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Cellular Telephone, New Products and the CPI

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Author Info
Jerry Hausman
Abstract

Cellular telephone is an example of a new product that has significantly affected how Americans live. Since their introduction in 1983, cellular telephone adoption has grown at 25-35% per year such that at year end 1996 about 42 million cellular telephones are in use in the U.S. However, cellular telephone has not been included in the construction of the CPI, and the CPI will not include cellular telephone until 1998 or 1999. This neglect of new goods leads to an upward bias in the CPI. The analysis of the paper demonstrates that the gains in consumer welfare from a new product such as cellular telephone can be substantial. The paper also gives an approximation result which the BLS could use to calculate gains in consumer welfare from new products for use in the CPI. The BLS telecommunications CPI estimates that since 1988, telecommunications prices have increased by 8.5% or an increase of 1.02% per year. This estimate ignores cellular service. A corrected telecommunication services COLI that includes cellular service decreased from 1.0 in 1988 to 0.903 in 1996 for a decrease of 1.28% per year. Thus, the bias in the BLS telecommunications services CPI equals approximately 2.3 percentage points per year. The neglect of new products in the CPI can lead to significant biases.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 5982.

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Date of creation: Mar 1997
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5982

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Hausman, Jerry A & Newey, Whitney K, 1995. "Nonparametric Estimation of Exact Consumers Surplus and Deadweight Loss," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(6), pages 1445-76, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Hausman, Jerry A, 1978. "Specification Tests in Econometrics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1251-71, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Diewert, W. E., 1976. "Exact and superlative index numbers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 115-145, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Jerry A. Hausman, 1996. "Valuation of New Goods under Perfect and Imperfect Competition," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of New Goods, pages 207-248 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Deaton, Angus, 1998. "Getting Prices Right: What Should Be Done?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 37-46, Winter. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Diewert, W Erwin, 1998. "Index Number Issues in the Consumer Price Index," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 47-58, Winter. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Austin, David & Macauley, Molly, 1998. "A Quality-Adjusted Cost Index for Estimating Future Consumer Surplus from Innovation," Discussion Papers dp-98-45, Resources For the Future. [Downloadable!]
  4. David E. Lebow & Jeremy B. Rudd, 2001. "Measurement error in the consumer price index: where do we stand?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-61, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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