The availability of large transaction level datasets, such as retail scanner data, provides a wealth of information on prices and quantities that national statistical institutes can use to produce more accurate, timely, measures of inflation. However, there is no universally agreed upon method...

We characterize inflation dynamics during the Great Lockdown using scanner data covering millions of transactions for fast-moving consumer goods in the United Kingdom. We show that there was a significant and widespread spike in inflation. First, aggregate month-to-month inflation was 2.4%...

We use real-time scanner data in Great Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic to investigate the drivers of the inflationary spike at the beginning of lockdown and to quantify the impact of high-frequency changes in shopping behaviours and promotions on inflation measurement. Although changes in...