Firms sometimes write price lists or catalogs for their exports, so they set prices for a period of time and do not adjust prices during that interval in response to changes in their environment. The firm sets the price either in its own currency or the importer’s currency. This paper draws a simple link between the choice of currency and the pricing decision of a firm that changes prices in re...

Traditionally, policymakers and financial markets have regarded the “core” consumer price index (CPI) as a key inflation indicator. The core CPI, a special index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), excludes the volatile prices of food and energy. In excluding these components, BLS recognizes that prices that swing dramatically in response to unusual shifts in weather and other un...

Modified BG Prasad socioeconomic scale is widely used to determine the socioeconomic status of study subjects in health studies in India. It is an income-based scale and, therefore, has to be constantly updated to take inflation and depreciation of rupee into account. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for industrial workers (IW) is used to calculate updated income categories for January 2014. Deta...

In recent years, formal certification programs for rating and evaluating the sustainability and energy efficiency of buildings have proliferated around the world. Developers recognize that such “green labels” differentiate products and allow them to charge a price premium. China has not formally adopted such rating standards. In the absence of such standards, developers are competing with each ...

Abstract Using two basic assumptions of time series analysis, a test is proposed to assess the quality of seasonal adjustment of a series. The test is applied to several seasonally adjusted series of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) using three methods of seasonal adjustment: State Space Model Based Method (SSMB), TRAMO SEATS Method and X12ARIMA method. The empirical results are presented along w...

Most real estate studies have been concerned with exploring the macroeconomic determinants of housing prices. Little attention has been paid to the context in which property markets function. This study, however, goes beyond macroeconomic factors and explores how country specifi c factors such as cultural values infl uence residential property markets. We have tested and verifi ed the assumptio...

In this paper we propose an alternative to traditional hedonics for estimating new multiunit housing inflation, adjusting for quality changes. Precise location, transport, traffic, closeness to services, or construction quality are some of the unobserved but typically relevant housing characteristics that may bias estimated house price inflation, even when using hedonic methods. By relying on t...