Economics of Price Indexes Conference
17th June 2010

In conjunction with the Australian Bureau of Statistics and with the involvement of the RBA, Treasury and several price index specialist producers and users, the Department is holding a one-day conference on Australian price indexes at the University of Melbourne on 17th June 2010.

The object is to hear and debate issues and developments in the production and use of consumer and producer price indexes: CPIs and PPIs.

There are recent survey articles on both the CPI (Tsiaplias,) and PPI (Norman) both in Aust Ec Rev, vol 41, 2008, and recent comments on CPI by Barrett and Brzozowski (Econ Rev, March, 2010)

There is ongoing interest, concern and debate about handling new products and quality changes, the use of price indexes in business (e.g. price adjustment clauses)? and econometric research, and in media and legal proceedings, and a series of inquiries going on about these and related issues. Some further matters concern the use of CPI and PPI for monetary policy, the treatment of housing, financial services, transport, the linking price and trade price indexes, international comparisons, regimen matters, index formulae and the like.

Anyone likely to be very interested in this topic should contact Neville Norman, the EPIC 2010 Convenor, as attendance is strictly by invitation.

Neville R. Norman
03 8344 5327? 0414 653 770? n.norman@unimelb.edu.au