IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v103y2009i1p12-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The apples and oranges theorem for price indices

Author

Listed:
  • van Veelen, Matthijs

Abstract

The question is whether or not there is a generally meaningful way to compute price indices. I explore the duality between price and quantity indices, and present an impossibility result that is analogous to the one for quantity indices.

Suggested Citation

  • van Veelen, Matthijs, 2009. "The apples and oranges theorem for price indices," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 12-14, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:103:y:2009:i:1:p:12-14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1765(09)00021-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthijs van Veelen & Roy van der Weide, 2008. "A Note on Different Approaches to Index Number Theory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1722-1730, September.
    2. Matthijs van Veelen, 2002. "An Impossibility Theorem Concerning Multilateral International Comparison of Volumes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 369-375, January.
    3. J. Peter Neary, 2004. "Rationalizing the Penn World Table: True Multilateral Indices for International Comparisons of Real Income," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1411-1428, December.
    4. Samuelson, Paul A & Swamy, S, 1974. "Invariant Economic Index Numbers and Canonical Duality: Survey and Synthesis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(4), pages 566-593, September.
    5. Hal R. Varian, 1983. "Non-parametric Tests of Consumer Behaviour," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 50(1), pages 99-110.
    6. John Quiggin & Matthijs Van Veelen, 2007. "Multilateral Indices: Conflicting Approaches?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(2), pages 372-378, June.
    7. Dowrick, Steve & Quiggin, John, 1997. "True Measures of GDP and Convergence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 41-64, March.
    8. Diewert, W. E., 1976. "Exact and superlative index numbers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 115-145, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antonio Peyrache, 2013. "Multilateral productivity comparisons and homotheticity," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 57-65, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. DECANCQ, Koen & FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2014. "Inequality, income, and well-being," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014018, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    2. Nicholas Oulton, 2012. "How To Measure Living Standards And Productivity," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 58(3), pages 424-456, September.
    3. Oulton, Nicholas, 2015. "Space-time (In)consistency in the national accounts: causes and cures," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86285, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. J. Peter Neary, 2004. "Rationalizing the Penn World Table: True Multilateral Indices for International Comparisons of Real Income," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1411-1428, December.
    5. Johnson, Simon & Larson, William & Papageorgiou, Chris & Subramanian, Arvind, 2013. "Is newer better? Penn World Table Revisions and their impact on growth estimates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 255-274.
    6. Barnett, William A. & Erwin Diewert, W. & Zellner, Arnold, 2011. "Introduction to measurement with theory," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(1), pages 1-5, March.
    7. Marshall Reinsdorf & Jack E. Triplett, 2009. "A Review of Reviews: Ninety Years of Professional Thinking About the Consumer Price Index," NBER Chapters, in: Price Index Concepts and Measurement, pages 17-83, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Abe, Naohito & 阿部, 修人 & Rao, D.S.Prasada, 2020. "Generalized Logarithmic Index Numbers with Demand Shocks: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice," RCESR Discussion Paper Series DP20-1, Research Center for Economic and Social Risks, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    9. Angus Deaton & Alan Heston, 2010. "Understanding PPPs and PPP-Based National Accounts," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 1-35, October.
    10. Neary, Peter, 2000. "True Multilateral Indexes for International Comparisons of Real Income: Theory and Empirics," CEPR Discussion Papers 2590, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Robert Inklaar & D. S. Prasada Rao, 2017. "Cross-Country Income Levels over Time: Did the Developing World Suddenly Become Much Richer?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 265-290, January.
    12. Robert J. Hill & T. Peter Hill, 2007. "Regionalization and its Implications for Price Index Construction: The Case of the International Comparisons Program," Discussion Papers 2007-28, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    13. Hillinger, Claude, 2008. "Measuring Real Value and Inflation," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 2, pages 1-26.
    14. Diewert, Erwin, 2009. "Cost of Living Indexes and Exact Index Numbers," Economics working papers erwin_diewert-2009-6, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 13 Feb 2009.
    15. William Larson & Chris Papageorgiou & Arvind Subramania & Simon Johnson, 2009. "Is Newer Better? Penn World Table Revisions and the Growth Literature," 2009 Meeting Papers 858, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Abe Naohito & Inoue Toshikatsu & Sato Hideyasu, 2022. "Price Index Numbers under Large-Scale Demand Shocks–The Japanese Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 38(1), pages 301-317, March.
    17. Bergh , Andreas & Nilsson, Therese, 2008. "Do economic liberalization and globalization increase income inequality?," Working Papers 2008:12, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    18. Barnett, William A. & Choi, Ki-Hong, 2008. "Operational identification of the complete class of superlative index numbers: An application of Galois theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(7-8), pages 603-612, July.
    19. Rahel Braun & Sarah M. Lein, 2021. "Sources of Bias in Inflation Rates and Implications for Inflation Dynamics," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(6), pages 1553-1572, September.
    20. William A Barnett & Unja Chae & John W Keating, 2012. "Forecast Design In Monetary Capital Stock Measurement," Global Journal of Economics (GJE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(01), pages 1-53.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:103:y:2009:i:1:p:12-14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.