Improving Harmonised Indices of Consumer Prices

ended

The proposed grant actions aim at improving the quality of the Austrian HICP. The current proposal deals mainly with the inclusion of new data sources and the implementation of empirical works in the area of clothing and electricity. For clothing the results of scanner data, web scraped data and traditional collected prices shall be compared to aim at a comprehensive sample that comprises stationary small boutiques and shops of bigger chains as well as the e-commerce channel – that are online shops of stationary shops and internet shops that offer a broad variety of brands. An important issue in this area is the occurrence of seasonal effects on the prices and on the samples. The second part, electricity, deals with the usage of data that are already collected in an electronic format for another purpose – the “Tarifkalkulator” of the Austrian regulatory body for electricity and gas. This data base could be used for the purpose of price measurement. The main activity in this area is the establishment of a production process that includes the definition of prices on a monthly basis for tariff prices in the presence of fixed prices, contract binding and the automatic price adjustments for the ongoing period. The result of both actions are reports that summarize the empirical work, advantages and disadvantages and work plans for the inclusion in the Austrian HICP.