This paper uses revealed preference restrictions and nonparametric statistical methods to bound true cost-of-living indices. These are compared to the popular price indices including the type used to calculated the UK RPI. This is used to assess the method of calculating the RPI for substitution...

This paper applies revealed preference theory to the nonparametric statistical analysis of consumer demand. It exploits the idea that price-taking individual households in the same market face the same relative prices, in order to smooth across the demands of individuals for each common price...

The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is the single most important indicator of inflation used by the European Central Bank. Sections 2 to 4 of the paper look at the theory of inflation indexes that could be used as target indexes of inflation. A Consumer Price Index (CPI) emerges as...

Van Veelen and van der Weide (2008) in a recent paper provided some interesting new perspectives on the index number problem. However, the present paper argues that their definitions of a true index and an exact index are different from the standard definitions in the literature. The differences...

The paper reviews and extends the theory of exact and superlative index numbers. Exact index numbers are empirical index number formula that are equal to an underlying theoretical index, provided that the consumer has preferences that can be represented by certain functional forms. These exact...

The traditional economic approach to index number theory is based on a ratio concept. The Konüs true cost of living index is a ratio of cost functions evaluated at the same utility level but with the prices of the current period in the cost function that appears in the numerator and the prices...

This paper develops a new framework for empirical modelling of consumer demand with particular reference to products that are differentiated with respect to quality and location attributes. The point of departure is a flexible representation of the distribution of product attributes and consumer...

In this paper we discuss statistical inference associated with the theoretical model developed in Part I. Specifically, we demonstrate how the relationship between the distribution of prices and unit values can be exploited to estimate some of the structural parameters. These estimates are...

We propose a method for constructing price indices when retailers use periodic sales to price-discriminate amongst heterogeneous customers. To do so, we introduce a model in which Loyal customers buy one brand and do not strategically time purchases, while Bargain Hunters always pay the lowest...

This paper sets out a general algorithm for calculating true cost-of-living indices or true producer price indices when demand is not homothetic, i.e. when not all expenditure elasticities are equal to one. In principle, economic theory tells us how we should calculate a true cost-of-living...