Semiparametric Engel curves are used to infer bias in the Canadian CPI as a Cost of Living Index. The budget share of food has long been used as an indicator of welfare. We compare households with the same levels of CPI deflated total expenditure over the period 1978-2000. Differences in the...

There is a debate whether the federal funds rate deviated from the Taylor rule. We present evidence that standard inflation measures do not reflect the contemporaneous state of housing rents, which is a large part of consumption. Using a new housing rent index (RRI) developed by Ambrose et al....

This report updates and extends earlier assessments of quantitative inflation perceptions and expectations of consumers in the euro area and the EU using an anonymised micro data set collected by the European Commission in the context of the Harmonised EU Programme of Business and Consumer...

We construct income-specific price indexes for the period from 2004 to 2016. We find substantial differences across income groups that arise during the Great Recession. The difference in annual inflation between the lowest quartile of the income distribution and the highest quartile was 0.22...

Measuring and comparing the levels of household welfare and poverty in a country require cost-of-living differences across regions to be properly adjusted. In measuring the spatial cost of living, the recent literature underscores the importance of detailed product quality information in the...

Intertemporal consumer preference shifts, although common in modern macro-economic models as drivers of demand shocks, have important but largely unexplored implications for price index theory and thus, for empirically measured price changes. The current practice of inflation measurement...

This study investigates inflation perceptions in both qualitative and quantitative terms and their relationship with factors likely to affect them. This has been done in a unified framework through a survey of a representative sample of Italian consumers carried out at the end of 2006. The...

The Indian national sample surveys collect data on the unit values of a large number of foods which can be used to compute price index numbers that can be compared with the official national price indexes, the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL) for rural India, and the...

Inflation perceived by consumers may differ from official statistics particularly due to different baskets of goods and services lay people and statisticians consider and by consumer loss aversion to price increases. Such effects, as suggested by the Prospect Theory, are confirmed in many...

Since February 2003 ISAE collects quantitative inflation opinions, within its monthly survey on Italian consumers. Data confirms the severe overestimation of inflation already emerged in previous studies. Quantitative replies are in line with more traditional qualitative evaluations, indicating...