ON THE RECENT EXTENSION OF PRICE AND PRODUCTION STATISTICS TO HEALTH AND EDUCATION

The paper pertains to the recent extension of price and production statistics to health, social assistance services and education. In the first part, it is underlined that using net prices instead of gross prices, as it has been decided for the European harmonised consumer price index, is inaccurate. The index is thus partly hybrid and inconsistent. The second part explains why, even if quality is a significant issue, production measures should not rely on the user’s changes of condition. It should rather be based on supplied quality. The paper then describes and discusses two complementary ways to estimate quality changes.