Modernising the HICP (Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices) Dirk-Jan Hoogerdijk, Eurostat, C4

HICP Digitalisation Modernization of price collection GTIN project

Price stability shall be defined as a year-on-year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area of below 2%. In 1993 the Protocol N° 6 that develops Article 109j(1) of the Maastricht Treaty stated that “inflation shall be measured by means of a consumer price index on a comparable basis, taking into account differences in national definitions”

HICP is a 'young' statistic based on CPIs are key statistics, with a lot of methodological differences between countries and ingrained practices

Harmonisation Harmonisation proceeded top-down: basic definition, scope, timetable and frequency of production Minimum standards defining outputs, leaving the how to member states In the course of 20 years further harmonisation through legislation and recommendations

Digitalisation Two sides: data collection and content Traditional price collection replaced Scanner Data Brick & mortar store Web-scraping Online shopping More efficient, less burden to respondents ….but often also necessary because of high-frequency pricing

Modernisation of price collection 'Uneven' allocation of resources can lead to a disp arity in development across member states that potentially harms comparability Since 2011 Eurostat has been supporting MS through grants to develop the use of scanner data, electronic devices and web-scraping. For several reasons not as effective as hoped for … more central control

Workshops In recent years the intensive use of workshops led by Eurostat have been added Use for reporting (as a part of grants rather than paper reports) Exchange of information Fostering of consensus, commitment, cooperation …obliquely achieving harmonisation

Modernisation of price collection 1 Guideline on processing scanner data drafted by Eurostat In grants we distinguish innovation / methodological development and implementation

Recently Eurostat project added: classifying GTIN (global trade item number) to ECOICOP GTIN project

Classifying & Replacements Recently Eurostat project added: classifying GTIN (global trade item number) to ECOICOP Involve all scanner data processing EU countries and experts from the outside on semantic technologies, machine learning and AI TenForce - Statistics Netherlands – Expert Group Scanner Data (BE, LU, NL, NO, SE, DK, IS, SI, CH …) – HICP workshop Start Feb 2017 – prototype classification Sept 2017

Classification Data analysis, pre-processing and data representation of scanner data standardised on the basis of existing data sets: extremely beneficial for NSI starting with scanner data Prototype for classification based on different models Background information/training on machine learning, feature engineering, model selection

Prototype

Beyond the HICP Classification also useful for scanned receipts used for HBS? Scanned receipts use descriptions that should be available as scanner data is for the HICP Credit card data? Web-scraping? And anything to help us get our HICP weights better …