Really? Every undergraduate class I can remember listed the failure to adjust for quality as one of the main problems with the CPI. And I don't think they just said it was "inadequate."
William Dickens wrote:
This is completely wrong. The CPI-u is, and the CPI-x was, adjusted
for
quality changes (see http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm ). The CPI-X doesn't exist anymore.
So what price statistic wasn't adjusted for quality changes?
They all are. No one (who knew what he was talking about) has ever claimed that they are not adjusted. The common claim is that the adjustments (which are quite complex and differ across different types of goods) are inadequate. - - Bill
William T. Dickens The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Phone: (202) 797-6113 FAX: (202) 797-6181 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AOL IM: wtdickens
-- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that
one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults
who prattle and play to it."--Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
