Verónica Bäcker-Peral ✓

@VBPeral

PhD student @MITEcon, Formerly Predoc @PrincetonEcon, @LMU alum

1 112Followers

189Following

43Posts total

611.3KViews on collected posts

Against accounts of the same size

11 posts from the last 90 days, next to the under 10K follower range. shown to more people than peers of the same size.

Median views12 262this account5 664median for under 10K

Reach, %1102.70%this account385.57%median for under 10K

Engagement, %1.06%this account1.10%median for under 10K

Metric	This account	Median for under 10K	Ratio
Median views per post	12 262	5 664	2.16×
Reach (views ÷ followers)	11.0× audience	3.9× audience	2.86×
Engagement rate	1.06%	1.10%	0.97×

Others in this range → Compare with another account → How these benchmarks are built →

Growth & engagement

How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.

Views per post

498.1K16 Jul

13.8K

12.3K

9.2K

9.9K

12.8K

15.3K

16.5K

8.6K

5.9K

Last 11 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.

Engagement rate per post

0.35%16 Jul

0.88%

0.95%

1.10%

1.26%

1.06%

1.09%

1.02%

1.50%

1.46%

0.76%

Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views. Median for under 10K accounts is 1.10%.

What the audience does

Likes60.1%2 458 in total

Reposts9.4%383 in total

Replies1.7%71 in total

Quotes2.1%85 in total

Bookmarks26.7%1 092 in total

Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.

The follower curve appears once this account has two daily snapshots — we take one a day, and this one is on its first.

Latest posts

@VBPeral @bhwittenbrink I love this -- would love to see a ton more visualizations with the data, e.g. just a raw chart showing prices (raw and quality-adjusted) for every type of good. You could also make a cool public dashboard where people can explore the data (& click thr 5.9K views · 42 likes · 1 reposts · 2 replies 16 Jul 2026 Paper: https://t.co/94QOJGVwrq Comments welcome! 8.6K views · 99 likes · 6 reposts · 19 replies 16 Jul 2026 Quality did not always rise. During the Great Depression, quality fell 7% as Sears shifted toward cheaper goods: silk vanished from apparel and curtains became two feet shorter — the "trading down" pattern theory predicts. (9/9) 9K views · 125 likes · 9 reposts · 1 replies 16 Jul 2026 First main result: quality improvements account for roughly half of the cumulative rise in unadjusted goods prices, and conventional deflators track sticker prices, not quality-adjusted prices. Standard deflators imply real goods consumption grew 10.3x from 1900–1990. Our index 16.5K views · 147 likes · 14 reposts · 2 replies 16 Jul 2026 Second main result: the timing of growth reverses. The conventional view puts the peak of US growth in the postwar "golden age" — but that view rests on price data from exactly the black-hole period. We estimate real goods-consumption growth of 5.4%/yr in 1900–1939 vs 4.2% in htt 15.3K views · 140 likes · 17 reposts · 5 replies 16 Jul 2026 What does quality change look like? For $5.98, Sears sold a gingham dress in 1922; a silk-and-wool dress with embroidered sleeves in 1925; and an all-silk dress with a more ornate cut in 1928. The sticker price never moved. The product transformed. (6/9) https://t.co/6PKGKHspR3 12.8K views · 122 likes · 9 reposts · 2 replies 16 Jul 2026 Our data: we digitize a nearly complete run of Sears catalogs from 1900–1990, yielding 5.1 million product listings. For each listing, we recover prices and detailed descriptions of materials, dimensions, features, warranties, and more. (4/9) 9.9K views · 118 likes · 6 reposts · 1 replies 16 Jul 2026 Method: we use those descriptions to estimate annual hedonic price schedules — what would the same bundle of product characteristics have cost one year later? This lets us construct a quality-adjusted price index across a broad range of consumer goods. (5/9) 9.2K views · 95 likes · 5 reposts · 1 replies 16 Jul 2026 This is hard for two reasons. Historical price data are limited — Gordon (1999) called 1914–1947 "the black hole where little is known." And product quality changed enormously. If better products are treated as simply more expensive, measured inflation is too high and real growth 12.3K views · 105 likes · 9 reposts · 2 replies 16 Jul 2026 To understand changes in living standards over long periods, it's essential to properly measure changes in prices. According to national data, nearly half of average annual nominal GDP growth in the US over the twentieth century is attributed to changes in the cost of living 13.8K views · 113 likes · 6 reposts · 1 replies 16 Jul 2026 Excited to share our new working paper: how much did the US standard of living really rise over the twentieth century — and when? With @bhwittenbrink Using 5.1 million Sears catalog listings, we build a quality-adjusted price index for consumer goods, 1900–1990. Two headline http 498.1K views · 1.4K likes · 301 reposts · 35 replies 16 Jul 2026