Changes in quality in information technology products provoke that compilation of their price indexes represent a major challenge. In this respect, the aims of this study are three. First, to build price indexes for personal computers during 1990-2004. Second, to compare our price indexes with those compiled by the Mexican Central Bank, the Spanish National Institute of Statistics, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And finally, to explore the viability of transfer hedonic functions between countries. Our results show a 21% average decline of the PC price index during the analyzed period. In consequence, official price index related to computers has a measurement bias. The adjusted CPI implies that the inflation rate was 4.425%, and not 4.463% as was established by the Central Bank between July 2003 and December 2004.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Ciudad de México in its series EGAP Working Papers with number
2005-02.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C20 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - General C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: