Statistical offices try to match item models when measuring inflation between two periods. For product areas with a high turnover of differentiated models, however, the use of hedonic indexes is more appropriate since they include the prices and quantities of unmatched new and old models. The...

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...

The consumer price index (CPI) is a key economic indicator used to gauge inflation, adjust wages, pensions, and social benefits. The producer prices index (PPI) is used for forecasting and deflating GDP estimates. Both indexes are used by the Fund, policymakers, and researchers for global,...

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...

Since late 1991, the IMF Statistics Department has conducted a program of technical assistance on consumer and producer price measurement and index compilation for the countries that have emerged from the former Soviet Union. These are countries whose economies are in various states of...

The vertiginous increases in the overall price level and dramatic swings in relative prices experienced by Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan since the onset of the transition rendered their traditional Paasche retail price indices obsolete and called for...

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...

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 reviews alternative approaches to measuring an economy''s cost competitiveness and proposes some new measures inspired by the economic theory of index numbers. The indices provide a theoretical benchmark for estimated real effective exchange rates, but differ from standard measures in...