MEASUREMENT BIAS IN PRICE INDEXES FOR CAPITAL GOODS*

The official U.S. price deflators for investment goods continue to be based on defective methodology, despite frequent criticism in recent years. This paper contributes new price information, which is combined with the empirical results from other studies to yield a revised investment deflator for the 1954–1963 period which (a) rises much more slowly than the official index and (b) declines relative to a revised price index for consumption expenditures.