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THE WRONGS AND RIGHTS OF UNIT VALUE INDICES
Author(s) -
Silver Mick
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4991.2010.00391.x
Subject(s) - superlative , value (mathematics) , unit (ring theory) , economics , price index , homogeneous , econometrics , index (typography) , product (mathematics) , unit price , microeconomics , statistics , mathematics , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , mathematics education , geometry , combinatorics , world wide web
There are two sides to unit value indices. The first is their widespread and unwarranted use based on customs data as surrogates for price relatives of product groups of exports and imports. For the aggregation of heterogeneous items, superlative price indices are best and unit value indices are biased. The second is the widespread and unwarranted use of price indices for homogeneous items, for which unit value indices are best and superlative price indices are biased. Then there is the “in‐between”: the case of broadly comparable items. This paper examines such issues.