The present paper shows that product-specific regional price dispersion usually causes the Country-Product-Dummy (CPD) method to be biased. In cases where it is not, this index number method is still inefficient and inference is invalid. In view of this, a nonlinear generalization of the CPD...

Lacking data on price levels across locations (countries, national regions, etc.) for cross-space comparisons, researchers resort to local consumer price indexes (CPIs) over time to evaluate these levels. This approach unfortunately fails to specify, even generally, the exactness of such...

Over the last three decades the supply of economic statistics has vastly improved. Unfortunately, statistics on regional price levels (sub-national purchasing power parities) have been exempt from this positive trend, even though they are indispensable for meaningful spatial comparisons of...

Our paper uses micro price data collected from Germany’s Consumer Price Index to compile a highly disaggregated regional price index for the 402 counties and cities of Germany. We introduce a multi-stage version of the weighted Country-Product- Dummy method. The unique quality of our price...

Over the last three decades the supply of economic statistics has vastly improved. Unfortunately, statistics on regional price levels (sub-national purchasing power parities) have been exempt from this positive trend, even though they are indispensable for meaningful spatial comparisons of...

This study addresses two significant limitations in the literature on cross-country expenditure comparisons: (a) treatment of all countries, large and small, as single entities with no spatial differences inside the countries, and (b) use of Divisia price indices, rather than preference based...

Spatial price comparisons rely to a high degree on the quality of the underlying price data that are collected within or across countries. Below the basic heading level, these price data often exhibit large gaps. Therefore, stochastic index number methods like the CPDmethod and the GEKS method...

Textbooks of macroeconomics regularly remind their readers that they should not interpret the macroeconomic price variable as some sort of average price. Instead it represents some price index indicating the average of the individual items' price changes between the period considered and some...