The celebrated economist Zvi Griliches’s entire career can be viewed as an attempt to advance the cause of accuracy in economic measurement. His interest in the causes and consequences of technical progress led to his pathbreaking work on price hedonics, now the principal analytical technique...

Recently controversy has surrounded the issue of whether Social Security payments to the elderly should continue to be adjusted automatically according to changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). One issue in the public policy debate concerns whether price inflation is different for the...