USING THE CONSUMER EXPENDITURE SURVEY DATA: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE RESEARCH.

The Consumer Expenditure (CE) Survey data are a collection of detailed consumer expenditures, income, and consumer unit characteristics. The data set is a rich source of information available to researchers conducting economic analysis. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the projects being undertaken at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in which these data are being utilized and to suggest directions for future research. The paper focuses primarily on the estimation of aggregate statistics, index numer reseach, econometric modeling, and survey research methodology. Topics addressed include: weighting, moving-weight price indexes, price indexes for demographic subgroups, interarea price indexes, tax and price indexes, demand analysis, statistical and econometric techniques, the econometrics of panel data, income and consumption distributions, cognitive research, composite estimation, non-normal distribution testing, and data imputation. Noted are changes in the survey methodology, which were introduced with the Continuing Consumer Expenditure Survey, and topics, within statistical methods, which focus on improving the measurement of CE variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]