IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/19582.html

Constructing a PCE-Weighted Consumer Price Index

Author

Listed:
  • Caitlin Blair

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of simulating the Consumer Price Index (CPI) with alternately sourced weights on the inflation experience for an average US consumer. The Bureau of Labor Statistics currently uses household spending data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) to construct expenditure category weights, or "item" weights, in the CPI. The Bureau of Economic Analysis also estimates consumer expenditures, but does so at a national level for publication of Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) in the National Income and Product Accounts. In this paper, 2005-2010 price indexes that utilize PCE weights instead of CE expenditure weights are compared with the CPI-Urban in order to evaluate current CPI weighting methods. These comparisons show that the annualized growth rate over five years of an adjusted PCE-weighted CPI is slightly lower than that of the CPI-U, while a reweighted index that uses PCE expenditure definitions grows much more quickly than the CPI.

Suggested Citation

  • Caitlin Blair, 2013. "Constructing a PCE-Weighted Consumer Price Index," NBER Working Papers 19582, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19582
    Note: EFG LS PE TWP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19582.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David E. Lebow & Jeremy B. Rudd, 2003. "Measurement Error in the Consumer Price Index: Where Do We Stand?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 159-201, March.
    2. Clinton P. McCully & Brian C. Moyer & Kenneth J. Stewart, 2007. "A Reconciliation between the Consumer Price Index and the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index," BEA Papers 0079, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jonathan A. Parker & Nicholas S. Souleles & Christopher D. Carroll, 2014. "The Benefits of Panel Data in Consumer Expenditure Surveys," NBER Chapters, in: Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures, pages 75-99, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Caitlin Blair, 2014. "Constructing a PCE-Weighted Consumer Price Index," NBER Chapters, in: Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures, pages 53-74, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Michelle L. Barnes & Zvi Bodie & Robert K. Triest & J. Christina Wang, 2009. "TIPS scorecard: are TIPS accomplishing what they were supposed to accomplish?: can they be improved?," Public Policy Discussion Paper 09-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    3. Abe C. Dunn & Scott D. Grosse & Samuel H. Zuvekas, 2016. "Adjusting Health Expenditures for Inflation: A Review of Measures for Health Services Research in the United States," BEA Papers 0109, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    4. Timothy K.M. Beatty & Erling Røed Larsen & Dag Einar Sommervoll, 2005. "Measuring the Price of Housing Consumption for Owners in the CPI," Discussion Papers 427, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    5. Jacob Greenspon & Anna Stansbury & Lawrence H. Summers, 2021. "Productivity and Pay in the United States and Canada," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 41, pages 3-30, Fall.
    6. Andree,Bo Pieter Johannes & Pape,Utz Johann, 2023. "Machine Learning Imputation of High Frequency Price Surveys in Papua New Guinea," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10559, The World Bank.
    7. Brian Adams & Lara Loewenstein & Hugh Montag & Randal Verbrugge, 2024. "Disentangling Rent Index Differences: Data, Methods, and Scope," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 230-245, June.
    8. Filho, Irineu de Carvalho & Chamon, Marcos, 2012. "The myth of post-reform income stagnation: Evidence from Brazil and Mexico," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 368-386.
    9. Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie & Uribe, Martín, 2012. "On quality bias and inflation targets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(4), pages 393-400.
    10. Gaddis,Isis, 2016. "Prices for poverty analysis in Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7652, The World Bank.
    11. Wolfgang Nierhaus & Timo Wollmershäuser, 2016. "ifo Konjunkturumfragen und Konjunkturanalyse: Band II," ifo Forschungsberichte, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 72.
    12. Gian Maria Tomat, 2005. "Prices, Product Differentiation And Quality Measurement: A Comparison Between Hedonic And Matched Model Methods," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 547, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    13. Borusyak, Kirill & Jaravel, Xavier, 2024. "Are trade wars class wars? The importance of trade-induced horizontal inequality," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    14. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2010. "Product Creation and Destruction: Evidence and Price Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 691-723, June.
    15. Yasutomo Murasawa, 2013. "Measuring Inflation Expectations Using Interval-Coded Data," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(4), pages 602-623, August.
    16. Mr. Nicolas End & Mr. Sampawende J Tapsoba & Mr. G. Terrier & Renaud Duplay, 2015. "Deflation and Public Finances: Evidence from the Historical Records," IMF Working Papers 2015/176, International Monetary Fund.
    17. Abe Dunn & Anne Hall & Seidu Dauda, 2022. "Are Medical Care Prices Still Declining? A Re‐Examination Based on Cost‐Effectiveness Studies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(2), pages 859-886, March.
    18. Nicholas Oulton, 2012. "Hooray for GDP!," CentrePiece - The magazine for economic performance 383, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    19. Masayuki MORIKAWA, 2010. "Economies of Scale and Hospital Productivity: An empirical analysis of medical area level panel data," Discussion papers 10050, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    20. Carlos Felipe Balcázar & Lidia Ceriani & Sergio Olivieri & Marco Ranzani, 2017. "Rent‐Imputation for Welfare Measurement: A Review of Methodologies and Empirical Findings," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(4), pages 881-898, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:19582. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.