With Laspeyres, Paasche and other authors such as Drobisch and Lehr, Germany made quite a promising start in index theory in the last decades of the 19th century. However, it soon lost ground after this period, which is described in this paper. The focus is not on biographies but on...

A popular and widespread, though rarely ever scrutinised method of measuring a complex multidimensional construct y consists of adding the scores (Wert), ..., (Wert) assigned to a unit in in "dimensions". These scores ("indicators") are supposed to represent the in relevant aspects of y....

The System of National Accounts (SNA) as well as the Boskin Report inconclusively discarded the idea of pure price comparison in favour of index formulas for which a meaningful interpretation is difficult to he found. The shortcomings of the "economic theory" approach followed in the Boskin...

Dem Laspeyres Preisindex mit einem konstanten Warenkorb wird regelmäßig eine mangelnde theoretische Fundierung vorgeworfen. Es ist zuzugeben, dass dieses bei Praktikern der Preisstatistik nach wie vor beliebte, wenngleich von Theoretikern kritisierte Konzept nicht sehr klar ausformuliert ist....

In a number of articles Neubauer tried to justify and recommend the use of two formulas, one known as Palgrave's index, the other being the harmonic mean of price relatives where weights are expenditures at base period. The properties of the two formulas are examined in detail. The indices have...

It is often the case that the value of a number of somewhat similar units (e. g., automobiles of a certain general type) is divided by the number of units in order to form a unit value price and these unit value prices are compared over two periods in order to form a unit value price index. This...