This paper compares the Portuguese and Bulgarian consumer price indices (CPI) and attempts to identify some areas in which the CPI compilation methodology could be improved in the two countries. This work is organised into six sections. The first section briefly describes the organisational structure on which the production of the CPI is based in the two countries. The second section focuses on...

There are numerous sources of bias in medical care price indices that lead to non-trivial biases in overall price indices such as the GDP deflator and the Consumer Price Index. I begin by reviewing various uses of price indices and therefore why both biases and changes in those biases matter. I describe the theory underlying official price indices. I next turn to problems of measuring medical p...

E xchange rate is an important factor influencing price indices of exported goods of a country in different ways. Imported intermediate commodity is one of the important ways by which the change in exchange rate affects price indices of the exported goods. Using the input-output table of Iran for the year 2001, this paper investigates the impact of exchange rate devaluation on price ...

What are the features of the correlation structure of price indices? To answer this question, 5 types of price indices, including 195 specific price indices from 2003 to 2011, were selected as sample data. To build a weighted network of price indices each price index is represented by a vertex, and a positive correlation between two price indices is represented by an edge. We studied the featur...

Locally weighted quantile regressions allow the coefficients of hedonic house price functions to vary over space. Using data on all house sales in Cook County, Illinois, for 20002011, I show how the full distribution of appreciation rates changed over time in small geographic areas. The estimates reveal significant spatial variation in appreciation rates both geographically and across the distr...

We discuss the basic theory of price indices. These form the basis for the Consumer Price Index in the United States. We note situations which can lead to non-robustness and volatility in several different price indices. An experiment to replace survey-based data with point of sales (POS) scanner data is being carried out. We visually explore the scanner data and conclude that certain aspects o...

Executive summary • Alternative house price indices are giving different pictures of the state of the housing market. For example, some suggest nominal UK prices had surpassed their previous 2007-08 peak by early 2014, while others do not. • In part, these differences reflect the fact that the various indices are trying to measure different things. In particular, there is some ambiguity as to w...