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This index uses the arithmetic average of the current and based period quantities for weighting. It is considered a pseudo-superlative formula and is symmetric. [12] The use of the Marshall-Edgeworth index can be problematic in cases such as a comparison of the price level of a large country to a small one.
The Consumer Price Index was initiated during World War I, when rapid increases in prices, particularly in shipbuilding centers, made an index essential for calculating cost-of-living adjustments in wages. To provide appropriate weighting patterns for the index, it reflected the relative importance of goods and services purchased in 92 ...
A cost-of-living index is a conceptual measurement goal, however, not a straightforward alternative to the CPI. A cost-of-living index would measure changes over time in the amount that consumers need to spend to reach a certain utility level or standard of living. Both the CPI and a cost-of-living index would reflect changes in the prices of ...
Index numbers are used especially to compare business activity, the cost of living, and employment. They enable economists to reduce unwieldy business data into easily understood terms. In contrast to a cost-of-living index based on the true but unknown utility function, a superlative index number is an index number that can be calculated. [1]
A price index (plural: "price indices" or "price indexes") is a normalized average (typically a weighted average) of price relatives for a given class of goods or services in a given region, during a given interval of time.
A CPI is a statistical estimate constructed using the prices of a sample of representative items whose prices are collected periodically. Sub-indices and sub-sub-indices can be computed for different categories and sub-categories of goods and services, which are combined to produce the overall index with weights reflecting their shares in the total of the consumer expenditures covered by the ...
The selection of the proper index to use depends on the industry in which it is applied. For example, while CE, M&S or IC Index are typically employed for chemical process industries, the ENR (Engineering News-Record) construction index is used for general industrial construction and takes in account the prices for fixed amounts of structural steel, cement, lumber and labor.
The new measure, called a "superlative" index, is designed to be a closer approximation to a "cost-of-living" index than the other measures. The use of expenditure data for both a base period and the current period in order to average price change across item categories distinguishes the C-CPI-U from the existing CPI measures, which use only a ...