“Which index formula at the elementary level, where no expenditure share weights are available, corresponds to a desired aggregate index?” To answer this question, this paper develops a statistical approach. It proposes a theoretical framework which makes it possible to achieve numerical...

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 method is proposed to measure capital services in production. This means that productive assets are weighted according to their user costs. The user costs of the individual asset classes are estimated based on data from the national accounts and other sources. The results show that, in the...

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...

Economic researchers often consider quotients like R&D investment divided by sales which could be used to measure “research intensity” of firms if available. However, data on research in particular are highly confidential and would not be released in original form. Therefore scientific use...

This paper focuses on the question whether West German firms have experienced an increase in their financial risk position with due implications for the macroeconomy. The investigation is based on a special evaluation of the balance sheet statistics by the Deutsche Bundesbank broken down into...

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....

The changes in the financial structures of West German industrial enterprises have been investigated in Größl/Stahlecker/Wohlers (2001). The empirical analysis confirmed the hypothesis that small and medium-sized enterprises are confronted with higher - and even rising - financial risks than...

The paper shows that the assessment of the speed of productivity growth crucially depends on how one chooses to measure value added. According to a widely held view, the growth rate of labour productivity has increased significantly in the U.S. since the mid-90s. The U.S. is perceived to...

Welche Bedeutung sollte dem ökonomischen Theorieansatz und damit insbesondere dem ökonomischen Kostenindex der Lebenshaltung (im Folgenden als "nutzenbasierter Ausgabenindex", NBA, bezeichnet) in der amtlichen Inflationsmessung eingeräumt werden? In diesem Beitrag werden die Potenziale des...