In this paper, we take stock of how statistical agencies in different nations are currently accounting for housing in their consumer price indexes (CPIs). The rental equivalence and user cost approaches have been favorites of economists. Both can be derived from the fundamental equation of...

Over the course of the recent house price bubble in the United States, the price of homes rose rapidly from 1999 Q4 to 2005 Q4 (11.3% annually as measured by the Case-Shiller index, and 8.4% annually as measured by the Federal Housing Financing Agency) but slowly as measured by owner equivalent...

The use of multilateral indexes is increasingly an accepted approach for incorporating scanner data in a Consumer Price Index. The attractiveness stems from the ability to be able to control for chain drift bias. Consensus on two key issues has yet to be achieved: (i) the best multilateral...

Although inflation is much feared for its negative effects on the economy, how to measure it is a matter of considerable debate that has important implications for interest rates, monetary supply, and investment and spending decisions. Underlying many of these issues is the concept of the...

This paper explores the definitions and properties of total factor productivity growth (TFPG) indexes, focusing especially on the Paasche, Laspeyres, Fisher, Tornqvist, and implicit Tornqvist ones. These indexes can be evaluated from observable price and quantity data, and certain of these are...

Statistical offices try to match item models when measuring inflation between two periods. However, for product areas with a high turnover of differentiated models, the use of hedonic indexes is more appropriate since they include unmatched new and old models. There are two main competing...

A previously overlooked source of potential bias in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is described. We find that unit value (average) prices, commonly used for construction of the CPI should be constructed over the same period as the index to be constructed, rather than over an incomplete...