Statistical offices try to match item models when measuring inflation between two periods. For product areas with a high turnover of differentiated models, however, the use of hedonic indexes is more appropriate since they include the prices and quantities of unmatched new and old models. The...

We define a class of bias problems that arise when purchasers shift their expenditures among sellers charging different prices for units of precisely defined and interchangeable product items that are nevertheless regarded as different for the purposes of price measurement. For...

The inflation rate is normally computed as a weighted average of individual price changes. Alternatively, this rate could be evaluated by comparing average price levels. Unfortunately, this methodology has received limited attention in past research. This study attempts to remedy this situation...

In order to provide information concerning the significant contributions to price index theory made by Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch (1802-1896), this paper presents an account of his pioneering scientific achievements together with a synopsis of his personal and professional life. He was the first to...

Disequilibrium in the housing market can be detected by comparing the actual price-rent ratio with its equilibrium counterpart obtained from the user-cost condition. Empirical implementation of this idea, however, is problematic because of quality differences between sold and rented dwellings....

The increasing availability of geospatial data (i.e., exact longitudes and latitudes for each house) has the potential to improve the quality of house price indexes. It is not clear though how best to use this information. We show how geospatial data can be included as a nonparametric spline...

There exist many different public indices which all purport to measure in some way changes in value in property markets.The primary purpose of this paper is to discuss what the various index methods actually represent, the significantly different results they can give and their successes or...

It is submitted, for the very large number of different traditional type formulae to determine price indices associated with a pair of periods, which are joined with the longstanding question of which one to choose, they should all be abandoned. A method is proposed whereby price levels...

Transaction-price residential (house) and commercial property price indexes (RPPIs and CPPIs) have inherent problems of sparse data on heterogeneous properties, more so CPPIs. In an attempt to control for heterogeneity, (repeat-sales and hedonic) panel data regression frameworks are typically...

Hedonic house price indices adjust the average sales prices for the change in the quality of the property sold over time. This paper proposes a framework to disentangle the contribution of each individual dwelling characteristic to this quality change. We apply our framework to a unique dataset...