Hedonic house price indices adjust the average sales prices for the change in the quality of the property sold over time. This paper proposes a framework to disentangle the contribution of each individual dwelling characteristic to this quality change. We apply our framework to a unique dataset...

The COVID-19 crisis had a major impact on the measurement of inflation around the world, as price observation in shops became impossible and some markets completely closed down. This article looks at the measures taken during the crisis in 2020 to ensure the continued compilation of the European...

Textbooks of macroeconomics regularly remind their readers that they should not interpret the macroeconomic price variable as some sort of average price. Instead it represents some price index indicating the average of the individual items' price changes between the period considered and some...

Lacking data on price levels across locations (countries, national regions, etc.) for cross-space comparisons, researchers resort to local consumer price indexes (CPIs) over time to evaluate these levels. This approach unfortunately fails to specify, even generally, the exactness of such...

Statistical offices try to match item models when measuring inflation between two periods. For product areas with a high turnover of differentiated models, however, the use of hedonic indexes is more appropriate since they include the prices and quantities of unmatched new and old models. The...

This paper evaluates the effects of product turnover on a welfare-based cost-of-living index. We first present some facts about price and quantity changes over the product cycle employing scanner data for Japan for the years 1988-2013, which cover the deflationary period that started in the...

Consumers hold inventory for future uses. This study investigates how such intertemporal decisions influence the cost-of-living index (COLI). To this end, I construct a simple dynamic model, in which goods are storable and nonresalable, and prices take either high (regular price) or low values...

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...

Various fields of economic analysis (e.g., growth and productivity) and economic policy (e.g., monetary and social policy) rely on accurate measures of price change. Unfortunately, the price index formulae that most price statisticians consider as particularly accurate - the superlative indices...

In Germany, package holidays are an important driver of consumer prices. Several challenges arise when measuring the price development of these bundled travel and accommodation services, such as the quality of accommodation and the timing of booking. Statistical practices are currently based on...