Suchergebnisse

A index that closely approximates the rate of inflation in consumer prices has been constructed from eight components that are available daily. The index has been compiled monthly from January 1968 through June 1990, with the results shown in Figure 1. The Daily Inflation Index includes the prices of foods, textiles, metals and oil as quoted in the commodity markets and also an index of dollar exchange rates, the Treasury bill rate, a price index for utility stocks, and the price of gold. The index accounts for 84 percent of the variation in the CPI inflation rate from 1968 to 1990 and is expected to be used as an independent measure of inflationary trends. In essence, the Daily Inflation Index is designed to measure the market assessment of inflation and should provide hedgers, traders, and consumers with timely information about inflation.

Disclaimer: The views represented in this report are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy position of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the federal government. ; Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Acquisition Research Symposium Cost Estimating ; The research presented in this report was supported by the Acquisition Research Program of the Graduate School of Business & Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School. To request defense acquisition research, to become a research sponsor, or to print additional copies of reports, please contact any of the staff listed on the Acquisition Research Program website (www.acquisitionresearch.net). ; Prepared for the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Money is held to economise on the high cost of conducting transactions in a barter economy, to provide a 'precautionary' reserve in case of unforeseen expenses and for speculative reasons, such as bearish expectations about shares or government securities. But if conventional money changes in value rapidly it ceases to serve all these purposes. In these circumstances it may become more convenient to conduct future transactions in terms of index-linked contracts which have the effect of changing the unit of account into a given basket of goods by specifying that future payments in terms of nominal pounds are to be scaled up or down by an amount which depends on the changes in an index of average prices.

Official price indexes may overstate (or understate) inflation for a number of reasons. These include substitution bias, outlet bias, failure to allow properly for quality change, and failure to allow for new goods. This note finds that substitution and outlet bias are probably not significant sources of error in the UK. The other two sources most probably do lead to significant overstatement, but the size of the upward bias cannot at the moment be quantified.'Since, with technological advance, the quality of products tends to improve, the estimates of consumers' expenditure tend to understate the true growth in standards of consumption'. (CSO a 985, p. 72).'The Producer Price Indices … make some allowance for changes in models and specifications when these can be identified in terms of changes of cost or in technical performance…. [Allowances for quality change] are necessarily somewhat rough and seldom fully satisfactory'. (CSO 1985, p. 40, emphasis added).

"No abstract available"--Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis web site