Price index

This morning the Office for National Statistics announced that the inflation figure for the year to September.

How might Brexit affect food prices?

IFS Director Paul Johnson writes in The Times.

This morning the Office for National Statistics announced that CPI inflation rose to 0.9% in the year to October, down from an inflation rate of 1.0% in the year to September but still substantially up from 0.6% in the year to August. The Bank of England expect inflation to rise further, to 2.4% in 2017 and 2.8% in 2018 – considerably higher than the 1.5% and 2.1% expected back in May. Most of this forecast increase is driven by the recent devaluation of the pound, which pushes up the price of imports. In this Observation we look at how the overall 2.5% increase in the price level which is likely to result from sterling’s decline since the June referendum will affect the prices of different goods. We then look at whether this is likely to have a bigger effect on poorer or richer households.

A webinar on an article published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society

This morning the Office for National Statistics announced that inflation, as measured by the CPI, was 0.9% in the year to September. This is only slightly higher than the 0.6% the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast in the March Budget. But since then many forecasters – including the Bank of England – have revised up their forecasts for future inflation as the sharp drop in the value of the pound since the referendum is expected to push up prices. This observation focuses on one consequence that higher inflation would have: the fact that it would reduce the real incomes of working age families receiving benefits that the Government has frozen in cash terms through to March 2020.

Presentation addressing policy makers, delivered at the UK Statistics Authority by Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, on 8 January 2015. The presentation marked the publication of the independent review of UK consumer prices statistics led by Paul Johnson.

In October the Office for National Statistics announced a consultation on possible reforms to the way in which one measure of inflation used in the UK, the Retail Prices Index, is calculated. This observation discusses what the proposed changes are and highlights that they could have far-reaching consequences.