CPI里的学问

Don’t Corrupt CPI

如果CPI统计指标设计失真,那么经济学家的猜测成绩该这样解读：猜得准的可能比猜不准的更笨。

National Bureau of Statistics of China reported the country’s CPI grew in the first quarter of 2010 at 2.2 percent compared with the same period of last year.Some experts confirmed there was no inflation during this period because of the slight rise in the CPI.But a recent survey found that almost all respondents agreed that inflation had already come.Who’s wrong? The consumer price index(CPI)is used in most countries as a measure to estimate the average price of consumer goods and services purchased by households.It consists of two basic types of data:price data and weighting data.In China,the weighting data of housing consumption accounts for only 13.2 percent in the CPI system,and the weighting data of food consumption is 32.8 percent,of which the consumption of pork alone accounts for 3 percent of the total weighting.The CPI is heavily skewed to food consumption in such a system,and the rise of housing prices,education expenses,and healthcare costs cannot be reflected reasonably and adequately.It’s dangerous for governors to use this flawed index as a vital factor in making decisions.