There are four main approaches to bilateral index number theory: the fixed basket, stochastic, test and economic approaches. The paper reviews the contributions of Irving Fisher to these approaches to index number theory which are still in use today. The paper also reviews Fisher’s...

The paper explains part of the methodology that was used in the 2005 International Comparison Program (ICP) that compared the relative price levels and GDP levels across 146 countries and 5 regions. Each of the regions constructed its own set of Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) and relative...

The paper explains part of the methodology that was used in the 2005 International Comparison Program (ICP) that compared the relative price levels and GDP levels across 146 countries and 5 regions. This paper looks at the methodology which was used in order to calculate relative volumes and...

The paper considers some of the problems associated with the indirectly measured components of financial service outputs in the System of National Accounts (SNA), termed FISIM (Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured). The paper characterizes FISIM by a user cost and supplier...

The first part of the paper reviews the methodology developed by Sydney Afriat for determining whether a finite set of price and quantity data are consistent with utility maximizing behavior by a consumer. Some extensions of his basic model to models of consumer behavior where the structure of...

Caves, Christensen and Diewert proposed a method for estimating a theoretical productivity index for a firm using Törnqvist input and output indexes, augmented by exogenous estimates of local returns to scale. However, in order to implement their method, they assumed that the firm maximized...

The paper discusses the three major problems that Deaton and Heston identify that make it difficult to construct consistent estimates of real output across countries: (i) the choice of a multilateral index number formula; (ii) weak national accounts estimates of country expenditures on the 155...

In many sectors of the economy, governments either provide various services at no cost or at highly subsidized prices. Examples are the health, education and general government sectors. The paper analyzes three possible general methods to measure the price and quantity of nonmarket government...

The paper uses hedonic regression techniques in order to decompose the price of a house into land and structure components using readily available real estate sales data for a Dutch city. In order to get sensible results, it proved necessary to use a nonlinear regression model using data that...

Once a business opts to purchase rather than produce an input, it can also change the source from which the product is procured. Producer price index programs face problems in dealing with price changes associated with sourcing changes. We present measures for price index bias due to sourcing...