IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/revinw/v20y1974i3p273-288.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Suitability Of The Divisia Index For The Measurement Of Economic Aggregates

Author

Listed:
  • D. Usher

Abstract

This paper considers the properties of the Divisia, or chain‐link, index, as they relate to the argument that this is the most appropriate index for use in studying the sources of economic growth. The great advantage of the Divisia index is alleged to be its “accuracy”, that is, its capacity to combine time series of prices and quantities to give a true reflection of the height of a utility or production function over time. The paper shows that there are circumstances where the confidence in the accuracy of the Divisia index is justified, but that the conditions required are very restrictive and typically do not obtain in the contexts where the Divisia index is used. Misplaced confidence in the Divisia index has led to errors of interpretation that might otherwise have been avoided, and has given rise to a distorted view of the process of economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • D. Usher, 1974. "The Suitability Of The Divisia Index For The Measurement Of Economic Aggregates," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 20(3), pages 273-288, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:revinw:v:20:y:1974:i:3:p:273-288
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4991.1974.tb00923.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4991.1974.tb00923.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1475-4991.1974.tb00923.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vazquez, Emilia & Rodriguez, X.A., 1997. "Un analisis de la productividad del comercio en las Comunidades Autonomas españolas," Economic Development 21, University of Santiago de Compostela. Faculty of Economics and Business. Econometrics..
    2. W. Erwin Diewert, 1980. "Aggregation Problems in the Measurement of Capital," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Capital, pages 433-538, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Rodriguez, X.A., 1999. "A proposal for decomposing and adjusting the conventional Divisia index for the measure of productivity," Economic Development 41, University of Santiago de Compostela. Faculty of Economics and Business. Econometrics..
    4. David Bigman, 1979. "Classification of Technical Change: Diagrammatic Illustration," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 23(1), pages 74-78, March.
    5. Vartia, Yrjö O., . "Relative Changes and Index Numbers," ETLA A, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, number 4.

    More about this item

    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:bla:revinw:v:20:y:1974:i:3:p:273-288. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iariwea.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.