Price and Quantity Index Numbers
Models for Measuring Aggregate Change and Difference

This book is the first comprehensive text on index number theory since Irving Fisher's 1922 The Making of Index Numbers.

Bert M. Balk (Author)

9780521889070, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 October 2008

300 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.61 kg

'Making sense of movements in money measures of economic activity necessarily involves distinguishing price and quantity movements. Professor Balk's book, reflecting his many contributions to index number theory and practice, provides an insightful and scholarly discussion of how price and quantity movements can be measured. The book provides an excellent review of various index number formulas and the quality of the attending measures. All of this takes place within the context of such topical issues as how to make international comparisons, handle seasonality, decompose component contributions from aggregate movements, and construct elementary aggregates. Economists and others interested in economic measurement will find this book a valuable resource.' Dennis Fixler, The George Washington University

Price and quantity indices are important, much-used measuring instruments, and it is therefore necessary to have a good understanding of their properties. When it was published, this book is the first comprehensive text on index number theory since Irving Fisher's 1922 The Making of Index Numbers. The book covers intertemporal and interspatial comparisons; ratio- and difference-type measures; discrete and continuous time environments; and upper- and lower-level indices. Guided by economic insights, this book develops the instrumental or axiomatic approach. There is no role for behavioural assumptions. In addition to subject matter chapters, two entire chapters are devoted to the rich history of the subject.

1. Price indices through history
2. The quest for international comparisons
3. Axioms, tests, and indices
4. Decompositions and subperiods
5. Price indices for elementary aggregates
6. Divisia and Montgomery indices
7. International comparisons: transitivity and additivity.

Subject Areas: Probability & statistics [PBT], Economic statistics [KCHS], Econometrics [KCH]