IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2006-174.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Elementary Price Index Number Formulas Differ: Price Dispersion and Product Heterogeneity

Author

Listed:
  • Mick Silver
  • Saeed Heravi

Abstract

The Consumer Price Index Manual (2004) provides guidelines for aggregation formulas that are promulgated at IMF training courses and technical assistance missions. This paper develops elementary level aggregation theory to better inform users and compilers. Most countries use either the Dutot or Jevons index formula. These formulas generally give different results; advice on choice of formula matters. Using an approach based on sample estimators, and an illustration based on scanner data, the paper shows how differences in these formulas can be explained by changes in price dispersion and, in turn, by product heterogeneity. Implications for choice of formula are considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Mick Silver & Saeed Heravi, 2006. "Why Elementary Price Index Number Formulas Differ: Price Dispersion and Product Heterogeneity," IMF Working Papers 2006/174, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2006/174
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=19328
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Silver, Mick & Heravi, Saeed, 2005. "A Failure in the Measurement of Inflation: Results From a Hedonic and Matched Experiment Using Scanner Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 269-281, July.
    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. Mick Silver, 2009. "The Hedonic Country Product Dummy Method and Quality Adjustments for Purchasing Power Parity Calculations," IMF Working Papers 2009/271, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Dogbe, Wisdom & Gil, José M., 2018. "Effectiveness of a carbon tax to promote a climate-friendly food consumption," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 235-246.
    3. Laczó, Ferenc, 2023. "Adalékok az inflációs folyamatok jobb megértéséhez [Additions to a better understanding of inflationary processes]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 613-646.
    4. Dogbe, Wisdom & Gil, Jose M., 2020. "Internalizing the public cost of obesity in Spain: Distributional effects on nutrient intake," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 1352-1371.
    5. Carlo De Gregorio, 2012. "Sample size for the estimate of consumer price subindices with alternative statistical designs," Rivista di statistica ufficiale, ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics - (Rome, ITALY), vol. 14(1), pages 19-47, October.
    6. Mick Silver, 2009. "An Index Number Formula Problem: The Aggregation of Broadly Comparable items," IMF Working Papers 2009/019, International Monetary Fund.

    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. Vincent Hoang & Takao Iida & Shigeru Matsumoto & Natsuki Watanabe & Clevo Wilson, 2016. "Consumer’s comparison between local and imported organic products: a hedonic analysis of the Japanese table wine market," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 6(3), pages 405-415, December.
    2. Silver Mick, 2022. "Econometric Issues in Hedonic Property Price Indices: Some Practical Help," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 38(1), pages 153-186, March.
    3. Mick Silver, 2010. "The Wrongs And Rights Of Unit Value Indices," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(s1), pages 206-223, June.
    4. Silver, Mick & Heravi, Saeed, 2007. "Why elementary price index number formulas differ: Evidence on price dispersion," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 874-883, October.
    5. Diewert, Erwin, 2007. "The Paris OECD-IMF Workshop on Real Estate Price Indexes: Conclusions and Future Directions," Economics working papers diewert-07-01-03-08-12-12, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 31 Jan 2007.
    6. Diewert, Erwin, 2019. "Quality Adjustment and Hedonics: A Unified Approach," Microeconomics.ca working papers erwin_diewert-2019-2, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 14 Mar 2019.
    7. Iqbal Syed & Daniel Melser, 2008. "Prices over the Product Life Cycle: An Empirical Analysis," Discussion Papers 2008-25, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    8. P. D. Chwelos & E. R. Berndt & I. M. Cockburn, 2008. "Faster, smaller, cheaper: an hedonic price analysis of PDAs," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(22), pages 2839-2856.
    9. Alex Isakov & Rodion Latypov & Andrey Repin & Egor Postolit & Alexey Evseev & Elena Sinelnikova-Muryleva, 2021. "Hard Numbers: Open Consumer Price Database," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 80(1), pages 104-119, March.
    10. Anne Kesselring, 2023. "Willingness-to-Pay for Energy Efficiency: Evidence from the European Common Market," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 86(4), pages 893-945, December.
    11. Mick Silver, 2016. "How to Better Measure Hedonic Residential Property Price Indexes," IMF Working Papers 2016/213, International Monetary Fund.
    12. W. Erwin Diewert & Saeed Heravi & Mick Silver, 2009. "Hedonic Imputation versus Time Dummy Hedonic Indexes," NBER Chapters, in: Price Index Concepts and Measurement, pages 161-196, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. MATSUMOTO Shigeru & OMATA Yukiko, 2015. "Consumer Valuations of Energy Efficiency Investments: The case of Vietnam's air conditioner market," Discussion papers 15063, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    14. Mark A. Wynne & Diego Rodriguez‐Palenzuela, 2004. "Measurement Bias in the HICP: What do we know and What do we need to know?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 79-112, February.
    15. Diewert, W. Erwin & Fox, Kevin J. & de Haan, Jan, 2016. "A newly identified source of potential CPI bias: Weekly versus monthly unit value price indexes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 169-172.
    16. Diewert, Erwin, 2007. "Index Numbers," Economics working papers diewert-07-01-03-08-17-23, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 31 Jan 2007.
    17. Jan de Haan & Rens Hendriks & Michael Scholz, 2021. "Price Measurement Using Scanner Data: Time‐Product Dummy Versus Time Dummy Hedonic Indexes," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 67(2), pages 394-417, June.
    18. Daniel Melser & Iqbal A. Syed, 2017. "The product life cycle and sample representativity bias in price indexes," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(6), pages 573-586, February.
    19. Mick Silver, 2009. "An Index Number Formula Problem: The Aggregation of Broadly Comparable items," IMF Working Papers 2009/019, International Monetary Fund.
    20. John S. Greenlees & Robert McClelland, 2011. "Does Quality Adjustment Matter for Technologically Stable Products? An Application to the CPI for Food," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 200-205, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    WP; base period;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:2006/174. 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.