The Validity of Consumption Data: Are the Consumer Expenditure Interview and Diary Surveys Informative?

Adam Bee, Bruce D. Meyer, James X. Sullivan

Chapter in forthcoming NBER book Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures, Christopher Carroll, Thomas Crossley, and John Sabelhaus, editors
Conference held December 2-3, 2011
Forthcoming from University of Chicago Press
in NBER Book Series Studies in Income and Wealth

---- Acknowledgements -----

Adam Bee is an economist in the Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division at the U.S. Census Bureau. Bruce D. Meyer is McCormick Foundation Professor of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. James X. Sullivan is associate professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. This paper does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Census Bureau. We would like to thank Tom Crossley, Thesia Garner, Steve Henderson, Clinton McCully, William Passero and Laura Paszkiewicz for their help and participants at the CRIW/NBER Conference on Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures for their comments. We also thank Kevin Rinz for research assistance.

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