1. Task Force Household Budget Survey Innovative tools and sources
Modernising the HICP
Modernising the HICP (Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices)
Luxembourg, December 2017
13/12/2017 – Dirk-Jan Hoogerdijk
European Commission, DG Eurostat the statistical office of the European Union
Unit C4

2. HICP
Digitalisation
Modernization of price collection
GTIN project

3. 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”

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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

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

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

11. 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

12. 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

13. Prototype

14. 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 …