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Bureau of Labor Statistics > International Technical Cooperation > Services > Seminars and Consultations

Constructing Consumer Price Indexes

Participant profile

This seminar is designed for economists, statisticians, researchers, analysts, and other professionals working with consumer price indexes in national statistical programs. Participants should have an elementary knowledge of statistics.

Objectives

To strengthen capabilities for the production and analysis of statistics on consumer prices and expenditures with relation to:

Designing, constructing, and analyzing indexes of consumer prices
Designing and conducting surveys of consumer expenditures to be used in price index construction and in the measurement of living conditions
Using statistical tools such as probability sampling and regression analysis in the measurement and analysis of prices and living conditions

Program content

This seminar is designed to present the theory, techniques, and methodologies for planning, designing, implementing, and maintaining statistical programs for the measurement of consumer prices and expenditures.

The CPI serves as a general economic indicator of the rate of inflation in a country's economy and as a measure for adjusting wages, salaries, and other income payments to keep pace with rising prices. The indexes are useful in formulating fiscal and monetary policies, adjusting components of national accounts, and determining cost-of-living wage adjustments.

Consumer expenditure surveys, which furnish data used in selecting and weighting item samples for consumer price indexes, provide valuable insights into the welfare of particular segments of the population and can be a source of data for family budget studies.

Participants are encouraged to bring with them the following materials for use in discussions and workshops: 1) methodological documentation on how data related to the seminar topic are collected in their home countries; 2) questionnaires used in their countries for obtaining those data; and 3) sample publications of those data.

The seminar includes discussions on the following topics:

Consumer Price Indexes (CPI)

Conceptual framework
Target population
Sampling and weighting techniques
Selection of sample items and outlets
Development of specifications
Collection and processing of data
Construction of index numbers
Seasonal items and other special problem areas
Data collection and conceptual problems in the informal sector
Publication, presentation, and dissemination of data
Application of the CPI in other countries

Consumer expenditure surveys

Basic concepts
Sampling techniques
Consumer expenditure survey design
Collection, processing, and publication of data

Techniques for analyzing data on prices and expenditures

Analysis of selected statistical tools and techniques
Use of price indexes as a deflator
Analysis of the ways in which price changes impact real wages and purchasing power

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Last Modified Date: June 14, 2022