A Critique of International Recommendations concerning Price Index Formulas.

The System of National Accounts (SNA) as well as the Boskin Report inconclusively discarded the idea of pure price comparison in favour of index formulas for which a meaningful interpretation is difficult to he found. The shortcomings of the "economic theory" approach followed in the Boskin Report (in addition to ideas expressly intended to simply lower inflation rates) and the various disadvantages of chain indices in view of their unsatisfactory axiomatic and deflation properties are demonstrated in detail. Implausibilities of chaining and "explaining" (as recommended in SNA) lack of additivity in deflation will drive official statistics into unnecessary difficulties.