“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...

We show that in a unit demand discrete choice framework with at least three goods, demand cannot be additively separable in own price. This result sharpens the analogous result of Jaffe and Weyl (2010) in the case of linear demand and has implications for testing of the discrete choice...

This work focuses on the development of house price indices for Nigeria, and the estimates of the Nigerian Residential Property Price Indices on housing characteristics are presented. Four main methods of index construction were considered, these are hedonic regression, repeat-sales,...

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...

This work focuses on the development of house price indices for Nigeria, and the estimates of the Nigerian Residential Property Price Indices on housing characteristics are presented. Four main methods of index construction were considered, these are hedonic regression, repeat-sales,...

The plutocratic gap is defined as the difference between the inflation measured according to the current official consumer price index (CPI) and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. During 1992-97, the plutocratic gap in Spain averaged 0.055 percentage points a...

This paper focuses on the choice between aggregate and disaggregate models, consisting of both univariate and multivariate specifications, in predicting aggregate variables. A formal hypothesis testing procedure for in-sample model selection is suggested. The empirical size and power of the test...

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...

The stochastic approach to index numbers has attracted renewed attention in recent times (e.g., Clements and Izan, 1981 and 1987; Diewert, 1995; Giles and McCann, 1994; and Selvanathan and Rao, 1994). One of the attractions of this approach is that it provides standard errors for the index numbers. This...