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Estimating the impact of quality adjustment on consumer price inflation

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  • Menz, Jan-Oliver
  • Wieland, Elisabeth
  • Mehrhoff, Jens

Abstract

How much does quality adjustment matter in measuring consumer price inflation? To address this question, we use different sources of micro and macro price data for Germany and the euro area. For Germany, we find that quality adjustment applies to a large range of goods and services but, on average, price adjustments due to quality changes reduce headline inflation only by 0.06 percentage points, which is balanced out by an increase due to quantity adjustment (e.g. a smaller package size) of the same amount. For the euro area, we assess the impact of heterogeneous quality adjustment methods by deriving the distribution of member states’ cumulative inflation rates for typical quality-adjusted products. Our macro-based estimate makes up to ± 0.2 percentage points for headline HICP inflation and ranges between± 0.1 and 0.3 percentage points for core inflation, when controlling for income differentials between member states. [...] JEL Classification: E31, C43

Suggested Citation

  • Menz, Jan-Oliver & Wieland, Elisabeth & Mehrhoff, Jens, 2023. "Estimating the impact of quality adjustment on consumer price inflation," Working Paper Series 2773, European Central Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20232773
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    Cited by:

    1. Erwan Gautier & Cristina Conflitti & Riemer P. Faber & Brian Fabo & Ludmila Fadejeva & Valentin Jouvanceau & Jan-Oliver Menz & Teresa Messner & Pavlos Petroulas & Pau Roldan-Blanco & Fabio Rumler & Se, 2022. "New Facts on Consumer Price Rigidity in the Euro Area," Working Papers 2022/03, Latvijas Banka.
    2. Cristina Conflitti & Riemer P. Faber & Brian Fabo & Ludmila Fadejeva & Erwan Gautier & Valentin Jouvanceau & Jan-Oliver Menz & Teresa Messner & Pavlos Petroulas & Pau Roldan-Blanco & Fabio Rumler & Se, 2022. "New Facts on Consumer Price Rigidity in the Euro Area (Erwan Gautier, Cristina Conflitti, Riemer P. Faber, Brian Fabo, Ludmila Fadejeva, Valentin Jouvanceau, Jan-Oliver Menz, Teresa Messner, Pavlos Pe," Working Papers 240, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    inflation differentials; inflation measurement; micro price data; quality adjustment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation

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