Robert Beachy, Beatrice Craig, and Alastair Owens, eds. Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres

This volume consolidates a session at the European Social ScienceHistory Conference in 2002. It comprises case studies of women'sactivities in various sectors of the European economy, fromfinancial investment to varied business and entrepreneurialroles, from women artisans to women in the more traditionalshop-keeping and retail trades and the time-honored, domesticand prostitution services. Their scope covers a variety of countries,including Germany, England, The Netherlands, Sweden, Austria,Spain, and     

An Empirical Evaluation of the CPI Home Purchase Index, 1973–1978

This paper examines the accuracy of the home purchase component of the Consumer Price Index. Alternative monthly index series are simulated over the period 1973–1978 using FHA Master Statistical File data. Hedonic indexes derived from monthly regressions are compared to series constructed by the current CPI index method, which utilizes only age and size of house in correcting for intertemporal quality change. Of particular interest is the BLS practice of "linking out" price changes occurring when FHA raises its ceiling on the size of insurable mortgages. This procedure may have led to a significant downward bias in the official index.     

Recent Controversies over CPI Methodology

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) has often been the subject of controversy. Historically, the most prominent critics have argued that the CPI overstates changes in the cost of living. Recently, however, some in the investment community and business media have argued that the CPI is an underestimate of inflation. Some have accused the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) not only of errors but also of willfully misrepresenting price change. These arguments have not been addressed to the BLS directly, and in many cases, they reflect serious misunderstandings about how the BLS produces the CPI. In this article, we address each of the key issues in turn.