Not my class! I remember laboring for a while under the misimpression that hedonic methods were used for autos (they aren't), but when you took Econ 1 from me I certainly never said the CPI wasn't adjusted for quality.
And yes, you can go the BLS web links that I had in my original post and read the technical documentation. This is, and has been for a long time, a major issue that people spend a lot of time thinking about. I think you are remembering your undergraduate education incorrectly (it has been a while Bryan). Some goods don't get any quality adjustment. It is possible that that is what you are remembering. There are cases where there are quality changes and no adjustment, but every index is, and always has been (as far as I know), adjusted to some extent to allow for quality changes. - - Bill William T. Dickens The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Phone: (202) 797-6113 FAX: (202) 797-6181 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AOL IM: wtdickens >>> Bryan Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12/04/03 02:43PM >>> Really? Every undergraduate class I can remember listed the failure to adjust for quality as one of the main problems with the CPI. And I don't think they just said it was "inadequate." William Dickens wrote: >>>This is completely wrong. The CPI-u is, and the CPI-x was, adjusted > > for > >>>quality changes (see http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm ). The CPI-X >>>doesn't exist anymore. >> >>So what price statistic wasn't adjusted for quality changes? > > > They all are. No one (who knew what he was talking about) has ever > claimed that they are not adjusted. The common claim is that the > adjustments (which are quite complex and differ across different types > of goods) are inadequate. - - Bill > > William T. Dickens > The Brookings Institution > 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW > Washington, DC 20036 > Phone: (202) 797-6113 > FAX: (202) 797-6181 > E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > AOL IM: wtdickens > -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it." --Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
