Price indices and inflation -

Price indices are used to assess how living standards have changed over time, to uprate state benefits and tax thresholds in line with increases in the cost of living, and to measure increases in house prices across regions of the UK.

Our research in this area looks at the advantages and limitations of different approaches to measuring price changes in various contexts. We also look at how households’ individual inflation experiences vary over time and across different demographic and income groups.

Price indices and inflation

Journal article | Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A

Is the Carli Index flawed?: assessing the case for the new retail price index RPIJ

Journal article | Journal of Business & Economic Statistics

The common-scaling social cost-of-living index

Individual cost of living indices will vary across individuals, and thus any social cost-of-living index faces an aggregation problem. This article proposes a solution to this problem.

Journal article | Economic Journal

The cost of living with the RPI : substitution bias in the UK retail prices index

This paper uses revealed preference restrictions and nonparametric statistical methods to bound the true cost-of-living index which corresponds most closely to the UK Retail Prices Index (RPI)

External publication

UK consumer price statistics: a review