IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2001-059.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Whose Inflation? A Characterization of the CPI Plutocratic Bias

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Eduardo Ley

Abstract

Prais (1958) showed that the CPI computed by statistical agencies can be interpreted as a weighed average of household price indexes, the weight of each household determined by its total expenditures. We decompose the difference between the standard CPI and a democratically weighed index (i.e., the plutocratic bias) as the product of average income, income inequality, and the covariance between individual price indexes and a parameter related to each good's income elasticity. This decomposition allows us to interpret variations in the size and sign of the plutocratic bias, and also to discuss issues pertaining to group indexes.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Eduardo Ley, 2001. "Whose Inflation? A Characterization of the CPI Plutocratic Bias," IMF Working Papers 2001/059, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2001/059
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=4093
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pollak, Robert A, 1980. "Group Cost-of-Living Indexes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(2), pages 273-278, May.
    2. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1996. "On Using Linear Regressions in Welfare Economics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(4), pages 478-486, October.
    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. Chamon, Marcos & de Carvalho Filho, Irineu, 2014. "Consumption based estimates of urban Chinese growth," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 126-137.
    2. Alvaro Montenegro, 2004. "50 anos del índice de precios en Colombia," Documentos de Economía 1904, Universidad Javeriana - Bogotá.

    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. Eduardo Ley, 2005. "Whose inflation? A characterization of the CPI plutocratic gap," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 57(4), pages 634-646, October.
    2. Claude Hillinger, 2002. "A General Theory of Price and Quantity Aggregation and Welfare Measurement," CESifo Working Paper Series 818, CESifo.
    3. Shoya Ishimaru, 2024. "Empirical Decomposition of the IV-OLS Gap with Heterogeneous and Nonlinear Effects," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 106(2), pages 505-520, March.
    4. Yitzhaki, Shlomo & Schechtman, Edna, 2012. "Identifying monotonic and non-monotonic relationships," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 23-25.
    5. Can, Zeynep Gizem & O'Donoghue, Cathal & Sologon, Denisa Maria & Smith, Darius & Griffin, Rosaleen & Murray, Una, 2023. "Modelling the Distributional Effects of the Cost-of-Living Crisis in Turkey and the South Caucasus: A Microsimulation Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 16619, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Vincent Geloso & Peter Lindert, 2020. "Relative costs of living, for richer and poorer, 1688–1914," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 14(3), pages 417-442, September.
    7. Heckman, James J. & Schmierer, Daniel & Urzua, Sergio, 2010. "Testing the correlated random coefficient model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 158(2), pages 177-203, October.
    8. 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.
    9. Clarke, Philip M. & Hayes, Alison J., 2009. "Measuring achievement: Changes in risk factors for cardiovascular disease in Australia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 552-561, February.
    10. Sloczynski, Tymon, 2018. "A General Weighted Average Representation of the Ordinary and Two-Stage Least Squares Estimands," IZA Discussion Papers 11866, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Shalit, Haim, 2012. "Using OLS to test for normality," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 82(11), pages 2050-2058.
    12. Víctor Iturra & Dusan Paredes, 2014. "Construction of a Spatial Housing Price Index by Estimating an Almost Ideal Demand System," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 105(3), pages 301-314, July.
    13. Ernst R. Berndt & David M. Cutler & Richard Frank & Zvi Griliches & Joseph P. Newhouse & Jack E. Triplett, 2001. "Price Indexes for Medical Care Goods and Services -- An Overview of Measurement Issues," NBER Chapters, in: Medical Care Output and Productivity, pages 141-200, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Graham, Bryan S. & Pinto, Cristine Campos de Xavier, 2022. "Semiparametrically efficient estimation of the average linear regression function," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 226(1), pages 115-138.
    15. Hillinger Claude, 2003. "The Money Metric, Price and Quantity Aggregation and Welfare Measurement," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-36, July.
    16. Alexander W. Huber, 2023. "Inflation inequality in Austria: A mid-term view on cost-of-living developments," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 49(1), pages 91-120.
    17. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2017. "Undergraduate Econometrics Instruction: Through Our Classes, Darkly," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 125-144, Spring.
    18. 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.
    19. González, Felipe, 2020. "Collective action in networks: Evidence from the Chilean student movement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    20. Jorge Duran & Omar Licandro, 2015. "Is the output growth rate in NIPA a welfare measure?," Discussion Papers 2015/18, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).

    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:imf:imfwpa:2001/059. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    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.