This paper demonstrates that inflation rates are significantly modified when they are based on an alternative quality-adjusted measure of housing rents constructed from a monthly statistic of landlord net rental income. During the Great Recession, the official rate was overestimated by 1.7 to...

The U.S. inflation measures, such as the Consumer Price Index, are adjusted for rent depreciation based on a 1988 estimate. This study estimates rent depreciation by using a novel rental-listing data set for the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The average annual depreciation rate is 0.2 percent for...