This paper provides an overview of statistical measurement issues relating to alternative measures of core inflation, and the criteria for choosing among them. The approaches to measurement considered include exclusion-based methods, imputation methods, limited influence estimators, reweighting,...

Price index compilers frequently face situations where price observations are missing due to seasonal unavailability, supply shortages, or the discontinuation of products. Incorrect treatment of such situations can result in biased price indices. This paper presents statistical imputation...

Prais (1958) showed that the CPI computed by statistical agencies can be interpreted as a weighed average of household price indexes, the weight of each household determined by its total expenditures. We decompose the difference between the standard CPI and a democratically weighed index (i.e.,...

This paper describes the primary framework associating the four principal price indices in the system of economic statistics—the Producer Price Index (PPI), the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and the Export and Import Price Indices (XPI and MPI)—with the macroeconomic value aggregates they...

This paper analyzes the availability, methodological soundness, and scope of Consumer Price statistics in IMF member and non-member countries in 2020. Consumer price statistics are instrumental in the development of monetary policy and in monitoring economic developments. They also often have...