In empirical economic research, individual prices are often aggregated into average prices of sub-aggregates. Then, these average prices are aggregated to produce the average price of the total aggregate. Often, such two stage procedures help to illuminate the underlying forces driving the...

This paper shows that any method for constructing a poice index has an underlying spanning tree. Using this insight, the debate over the relative merits of fixed base and chained price indices reduces to a debate over two alternative spanning trees.

The traditional CPI measure has many drawbacks, when used for very different purposes, and it is not at all surprising that a great deal of work has been devoted to its improvement. Besides seasonal adjustment, various other techniques have been developed to find the “core” inflation index....

This paper estimates a common component in many price series that has an equiproportional effect on all prices. Changes in this component can be interpreted as changes in the value of the numeraire since, by definition, they leave all relative prices unchanged. The first aim of the paper is to...

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s) STRIDE data contain records of acquisitions of illegal drugs by undercover agents and informants of the DEA and Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia. These data are widely used in economic analyses of markets for illegal drugs....