Quality Measurement in Economics

New Perspectives on the Evolution of Goods and Services

Steven Payson, Chief, Special Studies Branch, Government Division, Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC and Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration, US Department of Agriculture and the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program, Georgetown University, US

The concept of quality measurement is revived and given new meaning in this innovative new book. Steven Payson argues that quality measurement is an important issue in the study of price indices and in the additional areas of product innovation and evolutionary change. The user-value definition of quality is forcefully defended against the producer-cost definition, and a new method of measurement is introduced – the representative good approach (RGA). The RGA provides a new means for measuring quality over long periods of time by examining historical documents. A discussion of evolutionary change lays the groundwork for the identification of two processes: quality improvement and cost reduction. Using data from the Sears Catalog, quality improvement and cost reduction rates are estimated for five goods between 1928 and 1993: shoes, sofas, gas ranges, window fans and air conditioners, and cameras. The results are dramatic, supporting ground-breaking hypotheses on the determinants of quality improvement and cost reduction.

‘Dr Payson has combined interesting and sometimes unorthodox ideas with solid and innovative use of data from consumer catalog material, to give us a multi-threaded volume, sometimes provocative, that should interest a variety of readers and scholars.’
– Kelvin J. Lancaster, Columbia University, US

‘. . . the book is a “buy”.’
– Ralph Gamble, Southern Economic Journal

‘For years, economists have known that technical advance in many key sectors largely involved the creation of new products with significantly different performance characteristics than older ones, or the improvement of performance characteristics of older products or both. Yet almost all of the empirical and theoretical work on technical change has focused on cost reduction rather than quality improvement. This book by Steven Payson takes a giant step forward regarding quality measurement. Methodologically sophisticated and empirically painstaking, Payson's study documents and measures the enormous improvements in quality in a wide range of items that have been described in and sold through the catalogue of Sears Roebuck and Co. This is a fascinating and important work.’
——理查德·r·纳尔逊业务和Law at Columbia University, the City of New York, US