The Shortage Index

Matteo Iacoviello, Dario Caldara and David Yu construct a monthly news-based index for the U.S. of shortages of industrial goods, energy, food and labor covering the years from 1900 through present. The overall index is broken down into the contribution of its four (industry, energy, food, labor) components.

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Last updated: December 3, 2024 with data up to November 2024

Cite as: Caldara, Dario, Matteo Iacoviello, and David Yu (2024), "Measuring Shortages since 1900," working paper.

(When using the data, we suggest referring to both the website and the date of download; e.g. "Data downloaded from https://www.matteoiacoviello.com/shortages.htm on Month DD, YYYY").

Older data vintages are stored at https://www.matteoiacoviello.com/shortages_files/shortage_index_web_yyyy_mm.csv, where yyyy is the year and mm is the month of the update

Shortage Index: Full Sample (1900-present)

The overall shortage index (index_all_shortage) is scaled to an average value of 100 for the years 1900 through 2019. The individual indexes for energy, food, industry, and labor shortages add up to the overall index.

Shortage Index: 2020-present

The overall shortage index (index_all_shortage) is scaled to an average value of 100 for the years 1900 through 2019. The individual indexes for energy, food, industry, and labor shortages add up to the overall index.