Price Indexes
- Definitions and Problems
- Data on the CPI
- Alternative Price Indexes
- Inflation Project of the Atlanta Federal Reserve, with very interesting data on Sticky Prices (Excel) See Are Some Prices in the CPI More Forward Looking than Others? by Michael F. Bryan and Brent Meyer, Economic Commentary, FRB Cleveland, for an important use of this data.
- CPI Research Series Using Current Methods (CPI-U-RS) for information on how recent revisions impact past reports of inflation
- Trimmed Mean PCE Inflation by Jim Dolmas, FRB Dallas, 2005.
- Trimmed Mean PCE Inflation Rate The Dallas Fed has an interesting alternative to core inflation - trim off the highest and lowest percentage price rises, and average the rest. It is more fully explained in
a paper by Jim Dolmas Trimmed Mean PCE Inflation Southwest Economy May/June 2005.
- Google Plans Alternative Inflation Index Using Web Data by Robin Harding. Note that the weights reflect Web sales -- housing is only 18 percent of the Google Price Index, but 40 percent of the CPI.
- Do We Need Google to Measure Inflation? by Annie Lowrey, Slate, Dec. 20, 2010. Think about what prices the Google project might NOT be capturing.
- The Billion Prices Project @ MIT A project directed by Roberto Rigobon and Alberto Cavallo of MIT, tracking 5 million items over 70 countries.
- Seeing Inflation Only in the Prices that Go Up
by David Leonhardt, New York Times, May 7, 2008. A good article on why the CPI doesn't always reflect our sense of inflation. See also the graphics attached:
The Impact of Inflation