Firm Heterogeneity in Consumption Baskets: Evidence from Home and Store Scanner Data
110 Pages Posted: 15 Aug 2017 Last revised: 27 Jan 2020
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Firm Heterogeneity in Consumption Baskets: Evidence from Home and Store Scanner Data
Firm Heterogeneity in Consumption Baskets: Evidence from Home and Store Scanner Data
Date Written: August 2017
Abstract
A growing literature has documented the role of firm heterogeneity within sectors for nominal income inequality. This paper explores the implications for household price indices across the income distribution. Using detailed matched US home and store scanner microdata, we present evidence that rich and poor households source their consumption from different parts of the firm size distribution within disaggregated product groups. We use the data to examine alternative explanations, propose a tractable quantitative model with two-sided heterogeneity that rationalizes the observed moments, and calibrate it to explore general-equilibrium counterfactuals. We find that larger, more productive firms endogenously sort into catering to the taste of richer households, and that this gives rise to asymmetric effects on household price indices. We quantify these effects in the context of policy counterfactuals that affect the distribution of disposable incomes on the demand side or profits across firms on the supply side.
Keywords: Firm Heterogeneity, household price indices, real income inequality, scanner data
JEL Classification: E31, F15, F61
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation