Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz has criticized chain indices and Irving Fisher's time and factor reversal tests. However, his arguments (published in German articles) though well ahead of his time and still relevant today are widely fallen in oblivion. He was not the only German statistician who...

The aim of our paper is to discuss the problems of operationalizing the concept of a .cost-of-living-index. (COLI). For this purpose we are first undertaking a theoretical analysis of Diewert’s theory of superlative index numbers as one possible approach to approximate a COLI. We show that...

The fact that the famous price index of Laspeyres is unable to pass the so called inversion test (IT) gave rise to the idea that this formula tends to measure "spurious inflation" which renders it useless and fallacious. In the IT prices and quantities of n goods, relating to two periods, the...

There is presently an international discussion among statistical institutes, reserve banks etc. about the feasibility of replacing true price indices of exports and imports by unit value indices. For the very few countries, such as Germany, providing both indices on a monthly basis this would...

The unit value index (UVI) as compiled in Germany for exports and imports is compared with two other indices, viz. an index of Drobisch which unfortunately is likewise known as "unit value index" and the "normal" Laspeyres price index (PI) of exports and imports. The UVI may be viewed as a...

The New Stochastic Approach (NSA) – unjustly – pretends to promote a better understanding of price index (PI) formulas by viewing them as regression coefficients. As prices in the NSA are assumed to be collected in a random sample (what is particularly at odds with official price...

The paper criticizes the translation of the so called GEKS (Gini - Eltetö - Köves - Szulc) method to make consistent (transitive, or "drift free") international comparisons of price indices (parities), into the intertemporal framework. It shows that transitivity appears to be "over-ambitious"...

In seinem Heft 13/2004 vom 26.3.2004 veröffentlichte das Deutsche Ärzteblatt einen Artikel mit dem Titel "Von der Wahrscheinlichkeit des Irrtums", in dem der Autor Wolfgang Weihe eine seiner Meinung nach sowohl neue als auch ungewöhnliche Position bezüglich der Interpretation von...