IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4009.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Auditing the Producer Price Index: Micro Evidence From Prescription Pharmaceutical Preparations

Author

Listed:
  • Ernst R. Berndt
  • Zvi Griliches
  • Joshua G. Rosett

Abstract

In this paper we focus on a mystery we uncovered while undertaking a detailed audit of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index (PPl). We summarize our puzzle as follows. From January 1984 through December 1989.the BLS price Index for SIC 28341 (prescription pharmaceutical preparations) grew at an annual rate of 9.09%. For purposes of comparison, we have obtained monthly price and quantity sales data on all prescription pharmaceutical preparation products sold by four major US pharmaceutical manufacturers, accounting for about 24% of total industry domestic sales in 1989. Using Laspeyres price index construction procedures on these data that mimic BLS methods, we find that over the same time period. the four-company price index increased at only 6.68% per year. Finally. when we employ a Divisia price index procedure with smoothed weights that incorporates new goods immediately, the aggregate price index for these four firms grows at a rate of only 6.03% per year. Why is it that the official BLS price index grows approximately 50% more rapidly (9.09% vs. 6.03%)than the Divisia price index? That mystery is the focal point of our paper.

Suggested Citation

  • Ernst R. Berndt & Zvi Griliches & Joshua G. Rosett, 1992. "Auditing the Producer Price Index: Micro Evidence From Prescription Pharmaceutical Preparations," NBER Working Papers 4009, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4009
    Note: PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4009.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst R. Berndt & Zvi Griliches & Joshua G. Rosett, 1990. "On the Accuracy of Producer Price Indexes for Pharmaceutical Preparations: An Audit Based on Detailed Firm-Specific Data," NBER Working Papers 3490, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Ernst R. Berndt & Zvi Griliches, 1993. "Price Indexes for Microcomputers: An Exploratory Study," NBER Chapters, in: Price Measurements and Their Uses, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. George J. Stigler & James K. Kindahl, 1970. "The Behavior of Industrial Prices," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number stig70-1, January.
    4. W. Erwin Diewert, 1988. "The Early History of Price Index Research," NBER Working Papers 2713, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Hulten, Charles R, 1973. "Divisia Index Numbers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(6), pages 1017-1025, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Wynne, Mark A & Sigalla, Fiona D, 1996. "A Survey of Measurement Biases in Price Indexes," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(1), pages 55-89, March.
    2. W. Erwin Diewert, 1995. "Price and Volume Measures in the System of National Accounts," NBER Working Papers 5103, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Georganta, Zoe, 1997. "The effect of a free market price mechanism on total factor productivity: The case of the agricultural crop industry in Greece," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 55-71, October.
    4. Ernst R. Berndt & Zvi Griliches & Joshua G. Rosett, 1990. "On the Accuracy of Producer Price Indexes for Pharmaceutical Preparations: An Audit Based on Detailed Firm-Specific Data," NBER Working Papers 3490, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jack E. Triplett, 2007. "Zvi Griliches' Contributions to Economic Measurement," NBER Chapters, in: Hard-to-Measure Goods and Services: Essays in Honor of Zvi Griliches, pages 573-589, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Tsuyoshi Sasaki, 2019. "Welfare evaluations and price indices with path dependency problems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(1), pages 127-159, January.
    7. David Colman, 2010. "Agriculture's terms of trade: issues and implications," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(s1), pages 1-15, November.
    8. Stranger, Greg & Greenstein, Shane, 2008. "Pricing in the shadow of firm turnover: ISPs during the 1990s," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 625-642, May.
    9. Young, Andrew T. & Levy, Daniel, 2014. "Explicit Evidence of an Implicit Contract," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 804-832.
    10. Marquis, Milton H. & Trehan, Bharat, 2008. "On using relative prices to measure capital-specific technological progress," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1390-1406, December.
    11. Guerrero De Lizardi, C. & Pérez García, J., 2002. "Comparación del precio de los ordenadores en Estados Unidos y España 1990-2000: un enfoque hedónico," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 20, pages 549-564, Diciembre.
    12. Slade, Margaret E., 1999. "Sticky prices in a dynamic oligopoly: An investigation of (s,S) thresholds," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 477-511, May.
    13. Munisamy Gopinath & Daniel Pick & Thomas Worth, 2002. "Price Variability and Industrial Concentration in U.S. Food Industries," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 589-606, November.
    14. Alexander L. Wolman, 2007. "The frequency and costs of individual price adjustment," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(6), pages 531-552.
    15. Bernard, Jean-Thomas & Lessard, François & Thivierge, Simon, 1986. "La demande d’énergie du secteur commercial québécois," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 62(1), pages 5-22, mars.
    16. Basu, Amiya & Mazumdar, Tridib & Raj, S.P., 2007. "Components of optimal price under logit demand," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 182(3), pages 1084-1106, November.
    17. William A. Barnett & Yi Liu & Haiyang Xu & Mark Jensen, 1996. "The CAPM Risk Adjustment Needed for Exact Aggregation over Financial Assets," Econometrics 9602003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. P. Fernández-González & M. Landajo & M.J. Presno, 2013. "Factors Influencing Changes In Aggregate Energy Consumption. An European Cross-Country Analysis," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 13(2), pages 18-30.
    19. Taylor, J.B., 2016. "The Staying Power of Staggered Wage and Price Setting Models in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2009-2042, Elsevier.
    20. Philip Vermeulen & Daniel A. Dias & Maarten Dossche & Erwan Gautier & Ignacio Hernando & Roberto Sabbatini & Harald Stahl, 2012. "Price Setting in the Euro Area: Some Stylized Facts from Individual Producer Price Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(8), pages 1631-1650, December.

    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:nbr:nberwo:4009. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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: (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 hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.