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Could COVID‐19 Infect the Consumer Prices Index? *
Author(s) -
Blundell Richard,
Griffith Rachel,
Levell Peter,
O'Connell Martin
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
fiscal studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.63
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1475-5890
pISSN - 0143-5671
DOI - 10.1111/1475-5890.12229
Subject(s) - headline , covid-19 , inflation (cosmology) , index (typography) , consumer price index (south africa) , economics , price index , work (physics) , measure (data warehouse) , producer price index , monetary economics , econometrics , price level , business , advertising , monetary policy , mid price , medicine , computer science , virology , database , pathology , theoretical physics , world wide web , outbreak , engineering , mechanical engineering , physics , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty)
The spread of COVID‐19 has led to sweeping changes in the way households work, spend their time and shop, resulting in different shopping patterns and rapid price changes in some goods. How will changes such as these be reflected in headline inflation measures such as the Consumer Prices Index (CPI)? This paper discusses problems in interpreting the CPI as a measure of how the cost of living is changing during the lockdown.