NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Assessing the Bias in the Consumer Price Index from Survey Data

Alan B. Krueger, Aaron Siskind

NBER Working Paper No. 6450*
Issued in March 1998
NBER Program(s):   LS

This paper compares self-reported changes in families' financial status to actual changes based on annual time-series data calculated from the PSID. The results indicate that the Consumer Price Index does a reasonably accurate job reconciling self-reported changes in financial status with measured changes in real income. Earlier work by Nordhaus (1998) reached a different conclusion because it did not account for changes in the shape of the income distribution.

*Published: Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 121, no. 4 (April 1998): 24-33.

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