International comparison of economic aggregates, expressed in domestic currencies, requires their conversion into a common numeraire currency such as the U.S. dollar or the SDR. Since market (or official) exchange rates are subject to fluctuations which may result in comparisons that do not...

The purpose of this paper is to show that, under the price fluctuations that characterize most transition economies, the commonly used chain index derived from the published month-to-month price change of the PPI in some cases dramatically overstates the rate of price inflation. The analysis is...

Since late 1991, the IMF Statistics Department has conducted a program of technical assistance on consumer and producer price measurement and index compilation for the countries that have emerged from the former Soviet Union. These are countries whose economies are in various states of...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

Commodity prices may be a leading indicator of inflation, because of the relative importance of flexible auction markets for the determination of these prices. Empirical tests using data for the large industrial countries as a group suggest that changes in commodity prices tend to lead those in...