IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6450.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Assessing the Bias in the Consumer Price Index from Survey Data

Author

Listed:
  • Alan B. Krueger
  • Aaron Siskind

Abstract

This paper compares self-reported changes in families' financial status to actual changes based on annual time-series data calculated from the PSID. The results indicate that the Consumer Price Index does a reasonably accurate job reconciling self-reported changes in financial status with measured changes in real income. Earlier work by Nordhaus (1998) reached a different conclusion because it did not account for changes in the shape of the income distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan B. Krueger & Aaron Siskind, 1998. "Assessing the Bias in the Consumer Price Index from Survey Data," NBER Working Papers 6450, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6450
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6450.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brent R. Moulton, 1996. "Bias in the Consumer Price Index: What Is the Evidence?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 159-177, Fall.
    2. Eldar Shafir & Peter Diamond & Amos Tversky, 1997. "Money Illusion," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 341-374.
    3. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Robert J. Gordon, 1996. "The Economics of New Goods," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bres96-1.
    4. Robert A. Pollak, 1998. "The Consumer Price Index: A Research Agenda and Three Proposals," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 69-78, Winter.
    5. William D. Nordhaus, 1998. "Quality Change in Price Indexes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 59-68, Winter.
    6. Matthew D. Shapiro & David W. Wilcox, 1996. "Mismeasurement in the Consumer Price Index: An Evaluation," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1996, Volume 11, pages 93-154, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Luechinger, Simon & Raschky, Paul A., 2009. "Valuing flood disasters using the life satisfaction approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(3-4), pages 620-633, April.

    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. 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.
    2. Robert J. Gordon, 2000. "The Boskin Commission Report and its Aftermath," NBER Working Papers 7759, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Meijers, Huub & Hollanders, Hugo, 2003. "Sources of Growth: Measuring the Knowledge Based Economy," Research Memorandum 032, Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    4. Robert J. Gordon, 2006. "The Boskin Commission Report: A Retrospective One Decade Later," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 12, pages 7-22, Spring.
    5. Shiratsuka, Shigenori, 1999. "Measurement Errors in the Japanese Consumer Price Index," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 17(3), pages 69-102, December.
    6. Gordon, Robert-J, 1999. "The Boskin Commission Report and Its Aftermath," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 17(3), pages 41-68, December.
    7. Tsuyoshi Sasaki, 2019. "Welfare evaluations and price indices with path dependency problems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(1), pages 127-159, January.
    8. Huffman, Wallace, 2004. "Marketizing U.S. Production in the Post-War Era: Implications for Estimating CPI Bias and Real Income from a Complete-Household-Demand System," ISU General Staff Papers 200406010700001238, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    9. Ingvild Almås & Timothy K.M. Beatty & Thomas F. Crossley, 2018. "Lost in Translation: What do Engel Curves Tell us about the Cost of Living?," CESifo Working Paper Series 6886, CESifo.
    10. Ben S. Bernanke & Frederic S. Mishkin, 1997. "Inflation Targeting: A New Framework for Monetary Policy?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 97-116, Spring.
    11. Gaddis,Isis, 2016. "Prices for poverty analysis in Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7652, The World Bank.
    12. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2010. "Product Creation and Destruction: Evidence and Price Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 691-723, June.
    13. Joseph P. Newhouse, 2001. "Medical Care Price Indices: Problems and Opportunities / The Chung-Hua Lectures," NBER Working Papers 8168, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Takatoshi Ito & Frederic S. Mishkin, 2006. "Two Decades of Japanese Monetary Policy and the Deflation Problem," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy with Very Low Inflation in the Pacific Rim, pages 131-1997, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Andrew Dabalen & Isis Gaddis & Nga Thi Viet Nguyen, 2020. "CPI Bias and its Implications for Poverty Reduction in Africa," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(1), pages 13-44, March.
    16. Bode, Ben & Van Dalen, Jan, 2002. "The cost of private transportation in the Netherlands, 1992-1999," Working Paper Series 134, European Central Bank.
    17. Todd E. Clark, 1997. "U.S. inflation developments in 1996," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Q I, pages 11-30.
    18. Charles Hulten & Leonard I. Nakamura, 2020. "Expanded GDP for Welfare Measurement in the 21st Century," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century, pages 19-59, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Kovács, Ilona, 2003. "A fogyasztói árindex torzító tényezői [Distorting factors in the consumer price index]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 702-719.
    20. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow, 2001. "Quantifying Quality Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1006-1030, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    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:nbr:nberwo:6450. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.