IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ubc/bricol/erwin_diewert-2009-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cost of Living Indexes and Exact Index Numbers

Author

Listed:
  • Diewert, Erwin

Abstract

The paper reviews and extends the theory of exact and superlative index numbers. Exact index numbers are empirical index number formula that are equal to an underlying theoretical index, provided that the consumer has preferences that can be represented by certain functional forms. These exact indexes can be used to measure changes in a consumer’s cost of living or welfare. Two cases are considered: the case of homothetic preferences and the case of nonhomothetic preferences. In the homothetic case, exact index numbers are obtained for square root quadratic preferences, quadratic mean of order r preferences and normalized quadratic preferences. In the nonhomothetic case, exact indexes are obtained for various translog preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:ubc:bricol:erwin_diewert-2009-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.ubc.ca/diewert/dp0906.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Diewert, W E & Wales, T J, 1988. "Normalized Quadratic Systems of Consumer Demand Functions," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 6(3), pages 303-312, July.
    2. Diewert, W E & Wales, T J, 1992. "Quadratic Spline Models for Producer's Supply and Demand Functions," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 33(3), pages 705-722, August.
    3. Balk,Bert M., 2012. "Price and Quantity Index Numbers," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107404960, January.
    4. W. E. Diewert & T. J. Wales, 1993. "Linear and Quadratic Spline Models for Consumer Demand Functions," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 26(1), pages 77-106, February.
    5. Diewert, Walter E & Wales, Terence J, 1987. "Flexible Functional Forms and Global Curvature Conditions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(1), pages 43-68, January.
    6. 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.
    7. M. Denny, 1974. "The Relationship Between Functional Forms for the Production System," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 7(1), pages 21-31, February.
    8. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R & Diewert, W Erwin, 1982. "The Economic Theory of Index Numbers and the Measurement of Input, Output, and Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1393-1414, November.
    9. Diewert, W. E. & Wales, T. J., 1988. "A normalized quadratic semiflexible functional form," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 327-342, March.
    10. Diewert, W. E., 1976. "Exact and superlative index numbers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 115-145, May.
    11. Hill, Robert J., 2006. "Superlative index numbers: not all of them are super," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 25-43, January.
    12. Pollak, Robert A., 1989. "The Theory of the Cost-of-Living Index," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195058703.
    13. Samuelson, Paul A, 1974. "Complementarity-An Essay on the 40th Anniversary of the Hicks-Allen Revolution in Demand Theory," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 1255-1289, December.
    14. Blackorby, Charles & Diewert, W E, 1979. "Expenditure Functions, Local Duality, and Second Order Approximations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(3), pages 579-601, 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. Brynjolfsson, Erik & Collis, Avinash & Diewert, Erwin & Eggers, Felix & FOX, Kevin J., 2019. "GDP-B: Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy," Microeconomics.ca working papers erwin_diewert-2019-6, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 27 Mar 2019.
    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. Balk Bert M., 2010. "Lowe and Cobb-Douglas Consumer Price Indices and their Substitution Bias," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 230(6), pages 726-740, December.
    4. Cardullo, Gabriele & Sechi, Agnese, 2023. "Local Labor Markets with Non-homothetic Preferences," IZA Discussion Papers 16533, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. W. Diewert & Kevin Fox, 2010. "Malmquist and Törnqvist productivity indexes: returns to scale and technical progress with imperfect competition," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 101(1), pages 73-95, September.
    6. Michael C. Nwogugu, 2020. "Decision-Making, Sub-Additive Recursive "Matching" Noise And Biases In Risk-Weighted Stock/Bond Index Calculation Methods In Incomplete Markets With Partially Observable Multi-Attribute Pref," Papers 2005.01708, arXiv.org.

    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. W. Erwin Diewert, 2022. "Duality in Production," Springer Books, in: Subhash C. Ray & Robert G. Chambers & Subal C. Kumbhakar (ed.), Handbook of Production Economics, chapter 3, pages 57-168, Springer.
    2. Diewert, W. Erwin & Fox, Kevin J., 2016. "Kevin J. Fox Interview of W. Erwin Diewert," Microeconomics.ca working papers erwin_diewert-2016-6, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 02 Jun 2016.
    3. William A. Barnett & Ikuyasu Usui, 2007. "The Theoretical Regularity Properties of the Normalized Quadratic Consumer Demand Model," International Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics, in: Functional Structure Inference, pages 107-127, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    4. Diewert, Erwin & Fox, Kevin J., 2019. "Productivity Indexes and National Statistics: Theory, Methods and Challenges," Microeconomics.ca working papers erwin_diewert-2019-8, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 25 Apr 2019.
    5. Feng, Guohua & Serletis, Apostolos, 2008. "Productivity trends in U.S. manufacturing: Evidence from the NQ and AIM cost functions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 281-311, January.
    6. Diewert, W. E. & Wales, T. J., 1995. "Flexible functional forms and tests of homogeneous separability," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 259-302, June.
    7. Chambers, Robert & Färe, Rolf & Grosskopf, Shawna & Vardanyan, Michael, 2013. "Generalized quadratic revenue functions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 173(1), pages 11-21.
    8. Hideyuki Mizobuchi & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2021. "Quadratic-mean-of-order-r indexes of output, input and productivity," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 133-138, December.
    9. Diewert, Erwin & Mizobuchi, Hideyuki, 2009. "An Economic Approach to the Measurement of Productivity Growth Using Differences Instead of Ratios," Economics working papers erwin_diewert-2009-2, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 09 Jan 2009.
    10. William A. Barnett & Jane Binner & W. Erwin Diewert, 2005. "Functional Structure and Approximation in Econometrics (book front matter)," Econometrics 0511006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. W. Erwin Diewert & Robert C. Feenstra, 2021. "Estimating the Benefits of New Products," NBER Chapters, in: Big Data for Twenty-First-Century Economic Statistics, pages 437-473, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. 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.
    13. W. Erwin Diewert & Kevin J. Fox, 2021. "The Difference Approach to Productivity Measurement and Exact Indicators," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, in: Christopher F. Parmeter & Robin C. Sickles (ed.), Advances in Efficiency and Productivity Analysis, pages 9-40, Springer.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. Chihiro Shimizu & Erwin Diewert & Koji Nomura, 2024. "Estimating Flexible Functional Forms using Macroeconomic Data," Working Papers e206, Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
    17. Hideyuki Mizobuchi & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2018. "Measuring Productivity by Quadratic-mean-of-order-of-r Indexes," CEPA Working Papers Series WP062018, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    18. Diewert, Erwin & Feenstra, Robert, 2019. "Estimating the Benefits of New Products: Some Approximations," Microeconomics.ca working papers erwin_diewert-2019-3, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 13 Mar 2019.
    19. W. Erwin Diewert, 1995. "Price and Volume Measures in the System of National Accounts," NBER Working Papers 5103, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Exact index numbers; superlative index numbers; flexible functional forms; Fisher ideal index; normalized quadratic preferences; mean of order r index;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ubc:bricol:erwin_diewert-2009-6. 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: Maureen Chin (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.economics.ubc.ca/ .

    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.