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Consumer Expenditure Surveys
Bureau of Labor Statistics > Consumer Expenditure Survey > Home

2021 Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) Microdata Users’ Workshop

Thank You for a Highly Successful 2021 Workshop!

The 2021 Consumer Expenditure Surveys Microdata Users' Workshop (July 21-23) has concluded. As the second ever workshop held entirely (or even partially) online, this experience was still new for attendees and planners alike. Based on comments from attendees and observations of planners, this workshop was well received and highly successful. The planners wish to thank our presenters (see below) for a series of excellent presentations. Of course, there would be no workshop without attendees, and we appreciate their investment of time and effort to spend up to three days with us at the "virtual" Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). As usual, our attendees represented a wide range of specialties and occupations. From academia, they included students—from undergraduate to Ph.D. candidates—and professors. They also represented various federal agencies, and private enterprises. Furthermore, they joined from all over the world, with registrants on at least four continents.

Request for Comments

The workshop concluded with a feedback session to obtain comments from attendees to help us maintain and improve quality of future workshops. If you attended and provided comments, thank you. However, perhaps you did not have an opportunity to comment on a specific topic; you have had additional thoughts after the workshop; or you would like to follow up on a topic discussed during the session. If so, we invite you to participate by providing your comments at any time by email.

Looking Ahead

Next workshop. The seventeenth annual workshop will be held July 2023. To those who have never attended a workshop, but are interested in doing so, the planners look forward to answering any questions you may have. If you have already attended one, we hope you will join us again. The format varies from year to year as we incorporate recommendations from attendees, so that your experience at the next workshop will differ from that of the workshop(s) you previously attended. Regardless, the workshop is always free of charge to participants; that is, there is never a registration fee for the workshop.

Call for Presenters. Note that it is not too early to consider presenting your work at the 2023 event. Each year, we seek presentations giving practical examples of how the CE microdata can be used in research. Work from first-time and novice users is as welcome as work from experienced users. We only ask that your emphasis be on how the data were used, questions or problems encountered, and similar discussion (i.e., application of the data, rather than hypotheses tested or statistical methods used). (Note: The link for the 2023 event is forthcoming, but other than the deadline for submission, the basic procedures are not likely to change from 2021.)

Presenters at the 2021 Consumer Expenditure Surveys Workshop

Research Presenters

(in order of presentation)

  • Osborne Jackson,F Ph.D., Federal Reserve Bank of Boston: Larceny in the Product Market: A Hidden Tax?
  • Emily Miller,F,A Graduate Student, Princeton University: The Impact of State Sponsored Pre-K on Household Expenditures.
  • Jules Buxbaum,F Ph.D., President, 2PiFinancial: Estimating the Relations between Expenditures and Consumer Characteristics: An Application of Artificial Neural Networks to the Consumer Expenditure Survey Data.
  • Agnieszka Dobrowolska Perry,F,A Ph.D., University of Missouri, Columbia: Generational and Demographic Factors that Influences U.S. Diary Demand ‐ Evidence from an AIDS Estimation with Household Data.
  • Li-Chun Lin,F,A Ph.D., Montclair State University, New Jersey: Investigating the Domestic Travel Spending Trends during 2010-2019.
  • Jonathan Peters,P Ph.D., Professor of Finance, The College of Staten Island, and David King,P Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Arizona State University: Household Transportation Spending ‐ A Detailed Analysis of Spending Patterns during the COVID19 Pandemic from the CEX.
  • Hyong se Yoo,F Brandeis University: Weakened Wealth Effect.
  • Christina Lynn,F Ph.D. Student, Kansas State University: The Relationship between Luxury Consumption and Savings Behavior of the Middle Class.
  • Sarah Gelper,F,A Ph.D., Associate Professor of Marketing Analytics, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands: Consumption Inequality: A Cross-Category Approach.
  • Diego Mendez-Carbajo, Ph.D., Senior Economic Education Specialist, and Yvetta Fortova, FRED Manager, both of Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: Storytelling with FRED® Graphs: CES Data at Your Fingertips.

F First-time data user.

A Attendee at a previous workshop.

P Presenter at previous workshops.

BLS Presenters and Instructors

(in order of presentation, where applicable)

Non-DCES Staff:

  • Brian Nix, Mathematical Statistician, Division of Price Statistical Methods: Development of FINLWT21 and Related Variables
  • Chris Miller, Economist, Division of Consumer Prices and Price Indexes: How the Consumer Price Index Program Uses CE Data in Cost Weight Estimation
  • Josh Klick, Division of Consumer Prices and Price Indexes: CE Source Selection (co-presented with Brett Creech, CE staff member)
  • Very special thanks to Robin Kaplan, Ph.D., Research Statistician, Office of Survey Methods Research, who led the Attendee Feedback Session.

DCES Staff:

  • Scott Curtin
  • Adam Safir
  • Bryan Rigg
  • Grayson Armstrong
  • Aaron Cobet
  • Geoffrey Paulin
  • Brett Creech
  • Special thanks to Lekhnath Chalise, who served as workshop coordinator; and to Grayson Armstrong and Shane Meyers, who administered WebEx, the platform used for delivery of the 2021 workshop.

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Last Modified Date: May 6, 2022