Detailed Average Prices Lasse Sandberg Eurostat Unit C5 Price Statistics; Purchasing Power Parities; Housing Statistics

Structure of the talk Background The pilot project Challenges Future work

Background ESSC agreed a strategy for; Multi-purpose price statistics Must address the needs of the widest possible group of users, including the need for more detailed consumer prices data for single market monitoring Structural approach to price statistics Building links between HICP and PPP, to expand the range of price statistics produced, to improve the quality of price indices and to develop price level data that can be made available together in a single area

The Pilot Project

The Pilot Project Number of products in the project, by COICOP division   2010 2011 & 2012 2013 1 Food and non-alcoholic beverages 33 52 2 Alcoholic beverages and tobacco 5 3 Clothing and footwear 19 29 28 4 Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels Furnishing, household equipment and routine maintenance of the house 11 23 34 6 Health 24 7 Transports 10 8 Communications 9 Recreation and culture 12 22 Education Restaurants and hotels Miscellaneous goods and services 15 Total 90 157 198

The Pilot Project Average number of countries delivering prices, by COICOP division. 2012   Countries 1 Food and non-alcoholic beverages 18 2 Alcoholic beverages and tobacco 19 3 Clothing and footwear 14 4 Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels 13 5 Furnishing, household equipment and routine maintenance of the house 6 Health 7 Transports 8 Communications 9 Recreation and culture 15 10 Education 11 Restaurants and hotels 12 Miscellaneous goods and services Maximum 27

The pilot project Prices for 2012 27 countries 157 products 32 NSIs were asked (EU, HR, IS, NO, CH, TR) 157 products Well-Known Brands, Brandless and All Brands – 246 possible average prices Min/Max –8/152 Average 102 products White sugar – from all countries

Challenges Further research on the optimum level of specification in the product descriptions Tighter specification would increase the comparability of the products across countries On the other hand it would lead to a smaller part of the markets being covered and to less price observations

Challenges Coefficient of variation (CV) > 20 per cent = product specification too broad In the fourth pilot, only 40 per cent of the average prices show a CV below 20 per cent Efforts are needed to further narrow the product specifications, without reducing the coverage of the markets

Challenges Confidence intervals approximately the same, whether the calculations are based on the limited set of prices for WKB or all brands A distribution of prices that shows multiple peaks indicates different, possibly incomparable, products included in the average price

Future work Eurobase PPP & HICP Detailed Average Prices Product specifications Common products (300?) and collection Common approach for comparability and representativeness

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