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

2. Structure of the talk Background The pilot project Challenges
Future work

3. 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

4. The Pilot Project

5. The Pilot Project
Number of products in the project, by COICOP division
2010
2011 &
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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

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

12. Thank you for
your attention!