The Hamilton method for estimating CPI bias is simple, intuitive, and has been widely adopted. We show that the method confiates CPI bias with variation in cost-of-living across income levels. Assuming a single price index across the income distribution is inconsistent with the downward sloping...

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...

COVID-19 changed consumers' spending patterns, making the CPI weights suddenly obsolete. In most regions, adjusting the CPI weights to account for the changes in spending patterns increases the estimate of inflation over the early months of the pandemic. Under-weighting of rising food prices and...

Since the British government started using the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) for some uprating purposes in 2011, there has been a proliferation of consumer price indices in the UK – nine at the last count with some claim to apply to the population at large. Leaving to one side their possible use...

The International Comparisons Program (ICP) run by the World Bank compares the purchasing power of currencies and real income across countries. Using a unique data set consisting of over 600,000 ICP price quotes drawn from nine countries in the Asia-Pacific region, we consider a number of ways...

This paper considers the problem of aggregation in the case of large linear dynamic panels, where each micro unit is potentially related to all other micro units, and where micro innovations are allowed to be cross sectionally dependent. Following Pesaran (2003), an optimal aggregate function is...

This paper describes the primary framework associating the four principal price indices in the system of economic statistics-the Producer Price Index (PPI), the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and the Export and Import Price Indices (XPI and MPI)-with the macroeconomic value aggregates they...

Our paper uses micro price data collected from Germany’s Consumer Price Index to compile a highly disaggregated regional price index for the 402 counties and cities of Germany. We introduce a multi-stage version of the weighted Country-Product- Dummy method. The unique quality of our price...

Over the last three decades the supply of economic statistics has vastly improved. Unfortunately, statistics on regional price levels (sub-national purchasing power parities) have been exempt from this positive trend, even though they are indispensable for meaningful spatial comparisons 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...