Verónica Bäcker-Peral ✓
@VBPeral
PhD student @MITEcon, Formerly Predoc @PrincetonEcon, @LMU alum
1 112Followers
189Following
43Posts total
611.3KViews on collected posts
Latest posts
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@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 through
5.9K views · 42 likes
· 1 reposts · 2 replies
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Paper: https://t.co/94QOJGVwrq
Comments welcome!
8.6K views · 99 likes
· 6 reposts · 19 replies
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
9K
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.
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.
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Frequently asked questions about @VBPeral
How many followers does @VBPeral have?
1 112 followers.
How many posts has @VBPeral published?
43 posts.
How do posts by @VBPeral perform?
Collected posts: 11. Views: 611 303. Likes: 2 458.