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Journal Article
Are there good alternatives to the CPI?
Steindel, Charles (1997-04)
Critics of the consumer price index--the most widely watched inflation measure--contend that it overstates inflation by as much as 1 percentage point a year. Some have argued that alternative indexes eliminate the CPI's upward bias and offer a more accurate reading of inflation levels. A closer look at these alternatives, however, reveals that they have substantive problems of their own, suggesting that the CPI, though flawed, is still our most reliable indicator of changes in inflation.
Current Issues in Economics and Finance , Volume 3 , Issue Apr

Working Paper
Measurement errors in Japanese Consumer Price Index
Shiratsuka, Shigenori (1999)
In Japan, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is widely used as a measure of inflation or the cost of living. The CPI is constructed by using a fixed-weight Laspeyres formula. This formula is used mainly because of its ease of calculation and comprehension, thus limiting the total cost of constructing the statistics. However, such simplicity makes it difficult for the CPI to reflect dynamic changes in economic activity such as changes in consumers' behavior between goods in response to relative price fluctuation, the introduction of new goods, and the disappearance of old goods. As a result, ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-99-2

Journal Article
Relating commodity prices to underlying inflation: the role of expectations
Davis, J. Scott (2011)
Temporary supply factors may boost some commodity prices?a drought in the Midwest can jolt food costs, or a conflict in the Middle East might propel oil higher. These, in turn, can increase the overall consumer price index (CPI) and the headline inflation rate. ; Because central bank anti-inflation measures sometimes take a long time to affect prices, policymakers don?t necessarily react to short-term fluctuations in headline inflation (an overall rate that?s not seasonally adjusted). In fact, the mandate of many inflation-targeting central banks is to aim to keep headline inflation at a ...
Economic Letter , Volume 6

Report
Measuring economic activity and economic welfare: what are we missing?
Steindel, Charles (1997)
Major U.S. economic data, most notably GDP and Industrial Production, are undergoing major changes. Proposals have been made for significant alterations in the CPI. The revision process has helped to spur debate on such topics as the proper method of accounting for high technology's role in the economy, the reported sluggishness of productivity growth in many service industries, and the overstatement of price increases for numerous products. This paper attempts to assess the potential impact of some of these problems on our understanding of basic trends in the economy. It is found that with ...
Research Paper , Paper 9732

Journal Article
Alternative strategies for aggregating prices in the CPI - commentary
Howitt, Peter (1997-05)
Review , Issue May

Journal Article
The retail revolution and food-price mismeasurement
Nakamura, Leonard I. (1998-05)
If a product sells for $3 this week at the local supermarket and $2 next week, what is the "real" price? What if that same product has a different price at a different store? Thanks to scanner technology, food prices differ a lot these days because they can be changed quickly and easily. How do our official statistics take these price movements into account? Not too well, according to Leonard Nakamura. In this article, he describes the retail revolution of recent years and how it has led to mismeasurement of food prices
Business Review , Issue May , Pages 3-14

Journal Article
The future of inflation
Haubrich, Joseph G. (2011-10)
According to consumer price measures like the CPI, inflation has recently jumped up a notch. What those measures don?t tell us is whether the increase will persist. In this Commentary, we look at a measure that does. The measure incorporates data on past inflation rates, surveys of expected inflation, inflation swaps, and a variety of interest rates. It provides estimates of inflation, along with expected inflation and real interest rates. A look at the measure?s estimates suggests that the recent increases in inflation are likely to be temporary.
Economic Commentary , Issue Oct

Journal Article
Price hedonics: a critical review
Hulten, Charles R. (2003-09)
This paper was presented at the conference "Economic Statistics: New Needs for the Twenty-First Century," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, and the National Association for Business Economics, July 11, 2002. The main objective of this paper is to make a start in the evaluation of price hedonics. The author describes the hedonic model and reviews its main uses, because the credibility of price hedonics depends in part on the current state of academic research. This is a brief overview. The author then turns to some of the ...
Economic Policy Review , Issue Sep , Pages 5-15

Report
How rigid are producer prices?
Hellerstein, Rebecca; Goldberg, Pinelopi K. (2009)
Conventional wisdom suggests that producer prices are more rigid than consumer prices and therefore play less of a role in the allocation of goods and services. Analyzing 1987-2008 microdata collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the producer price index, we find that producer prices for finished goods and services in fact exhibit roughly the same rigidity as consumer prices that include sales and substantially less rigidity than consumer prices that exclude them. Moreover, large firms change prices two to three times more frequently than small firms do, and by smaller amounts, ...
Staff Reports , Paper 407

Journal Article
The inflation issue
anonymous (2011-04)
Over the long term, steady job growth requires low and stable inflation. In this special issue of Forefront, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Sandra Pianalto explains why price stability is essential for maximum employment and how the adoption of a numerical target for inflation may improve the central bank?s ability to achieve both objectives.
Forefront , Issue Spring , Pages 1-32

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