Price indexes and quality change : Studies in new methods of measurements

When price indexes (such as the Consumer Price Index) are computed by government agencies, quality changes of products are not often taken into account. The papers in this volume, well documented with over 70 tables, analyze the theoretical and empirical problems involved in the measurement of price and quality change. They include a theoretical discussion of quality change and its implications for the construction of price index numbers, by Franklin M. Fisher and Karl Shell; a series of five papers outlining, applying, and extending the hedonic (regression) approach to price change measurement, by Zvi Griliches, Phoebus J. Dhrymes, Irving B. Kravis and Robert E. Lipsey, and Jack E. Triplett; and two papers on the use of secondhand market prices for the measurement of quality change, by Phillip Cagan and Robert E. Hall. Contents Foreword Editor’s Preface 1. Introduction: Hedonic Price Indexes Revisited 2. Taste and Quality Change in the Pure Theory of the True Cost-of-Living Index 3. Hedonic Price Indexes for Automobiles: An Econometric Analysis of Quality Change 4. Price and Quality Changes in Consumer Capital Goods: An Empirical Study 5. International Price Comparisons by Regression Methods 6. Quality Bias in Price Indexes and New Methods of Quality Measurement 7. Measuring Quality Changes and the Purchasing Power of Money: An Exploratory Study of Automobiles 8. The Measurement of Quality Change from Vintage Price Data Bibliography and Index Bibliography Index Griliches Zvi : Zvi Griliches was Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University.