Price indices are constructed to represent a population by using a sample of household expenditure information as weights. This expenditure information must be aggregated across households. In most cases, including the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI), the aggregation method used corresponds to a plutocratic index. Other types of aggregation, such as the democratic index, are also possible, and,...

india has experienced persistently high inflation in recent years, despite a period of below-trend economic growth. As a result, controlling inflation has become a key objective for policymakers. The two main indicators of inflation in india are the wholesale price index (Wpi) and the consumer price index (cpi). Although the Wpi has traditionally been the most widely used measure for assessing ...

Legislation enacted in 1972 introduced an automatic benefit increase provision into the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program of the United States.’ Present law calls for the adjustment of benefits for those already on the rolls to keep pace with inflation whenever the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rises by 3 percent or more from the first quarter of one year to the first qu...

1.1 A price index is a measure of the proportionate, or percentage, changes in a set of prices over time. A consumer price index (CPI) measures changes in the prices of goods and services that households consume. Such changes affect the real purchasing power of consumers’ incomes and their welfare. As the prices of different goods and services do not all change at the same rate, a price index c...

In EU countries, knowledge on spatial disparities in overall price level is extremely scarce. When interregional price disparities are large, however, nominal income measures fail to assess prosperity and the catch-up processes of regions. Despite its importance for regional policy, no official regional price statistic is available as a standard. On account of this gap, this paper deals with th...

The practice of making hedonic-based price adjustments to remove the effects of quality changes in goods and services that enter into the calculation of the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) has to date focused primarily on indexes for consumer electronics, appliances, housing, and apparel. In an effort to expand the use of hedonic adjustments to a service-oriented area of the CPI, this article i...

nterest in commodity prices as indicators of consumer price inflation has ebbed and flowed with the rise and fall in commodity prices themselves. True to form, as commodity prices have surged in the last two years (Chart 1), interest in their predictive power has returned. Inflation hawks point to an outpouring of studies in the late 1980s showing a strong empirical connection between commodity...

An expert system is being developed to help assure the quality of data in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The system replicates the reasoning of Commodity Analysts determining if a substitute product is comparable to a product priced in the previous month. If comparable, its price can be considered in producing the CPI. The system reasons with expertise directly entered by Commodity Analysts. T...

flation expectations. As a nominal anchor, an inflation target also provides a commitment mechanism that increases the accountability of the monetary policy authority. The inflation target communicates to the public the inflation rate at which the central bank will aim in the future. It thus serves as a reference point against which the central bank can be judged. In January 1993 the Sveriges R...

Much of the inflation forecasting literature examines the ability of macroeconomic indicators to accurately predict mean inflation. For the period after 1984, existing empirical evidence largely suggests that the likelihood of accurately predicting inflation using macroeconomic indicators is no better than a random walk model. We expand the scope of inflation predictability by exploring whether...