Full Citation

Title: Downward Bias in the Most Important CPI Component: The Case of Rental Shelter, 1914-2003

Citation Type: Book, Section

Publication Year: 2007

ISBN: 0-226-04449-1; 978-0-226-04449-1

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Abstract: This paper develops new price indexes from a variety of sources to assess the hypothesis that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for rental shelter housing has been biased downward for its entire history since 1914. Rental shelter housing is the most important single category of the CPI, especially for those years when rent data have been used to impute price changes for owner-occupied housing. If valid, the implications of the hypothesis of downward bias would carry over to the deflator for personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and, in the opposite direction, to historical measures of real PCE and real gross domestic product (GDP).

Url: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c0877

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Authors: Gordon , Robert, J; vanGoethem, Todd

Editors: Berndt , Ernst, R; Hulten, Charles, R

Pages: 153-195

Volume Title: Hard-to-Measure Goods and Services: Essays in Honor of Zvi Griliches

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Publisher Location: Chicago, Illinois

Volume: 67

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

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