The compilation of commercial property price indices is a big challenge. In Germany, substantive data gaps prevent the calculation of official figures by the national statistical authority. By contrast, policymakers urge for timely, reliable and comprehensive data. In this paper, proposals are...

Current HICP measurement practices produce an upward bias of about one-ninth of a percentage point in German inflation due to changing consumption being disregarded and the preliminary data being used in the compilation of expenditure weights. The statistical uncertainty produced by these...

Using micro price data underlying the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices in France, Germany and Italy, we estimate relative price trends over the product life cycle and show that minimizing price and mark-up distortions in the presence of these trends requires targeting a significantly positive...

The shifts in household consumption caused by the coronavirus pandemic affect inflation measurement in the euro area via the updating of product weights. We propose a decomposition of the inflation rate, measured by the annual percentage change of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP),...

We show that if business cycles are driven by financial shocks, the interplay between the effective lower bound (ELB) and the costs of external financing can generate an additional supply-side channel, which causes a disconnect between inflation and output. In normal times, factor costs dominate...

Using CPI micro data for 11 euro area countries covering about 60% of the euro area consumption basket over the period 2010-2019, we document new findings on consumer price rigidity in the euro area: (i) each month on average 12.3% of prices change, which compares with 19.3% in the United...