Inflation/Consumer Price Index (CPI)
Inflation figures are important "early bird" indicators not only for financial markets but also for the general public. They indicate the stability of the corresponding currency and its impacts on the labour markets. It makes the inflation rate an important target value, hopefully well controlled by monetary and financial authorities.
This explains the fundamental role of inflation targets as fixed e.g. in the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the crisis resolution mechanism for countries of the Euro area.
Latest News
May 2016: Improve the measurement of inflation
"Calculating high-quality CPIs relies on good data sources, the use of sound statistical methods and continuous adaptation to the ever-changing markets of consumer products. More than 100 statisticians from the UNECE region and beyond - including North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific - will meet in Geneva on 2-4 May at the UNECE CPI Expert Group meeting to discuss how to improve price statistics. The experts will discuss ways of using new electronic data sources, such as Big Data and bar code data. This may improve the quality of statistics and help make the statistical production process more efficient. The programme of the meeting also includes discussions on how to produce CPI for specific population groups, house price indices, and other challenges in measuring the CPI." UNECE, Geneva
Definition
"The consumer price index (CPI) measures changes over time in the general level of prices of goods and services that a reference population acquires, uses or pays for consumption." OECD, Paris
Synonym: inflation
Sources (examples)
e.g. Eurostat's database "HICP harmonised indices of consumer prices - monthly data"
provides the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) with a time delay of approx. three weeks only for a wide range of product groups.
or World Bank's "Global Economic Monitor"
- it provides monthly and annual inflation series for various goods/groups of goods (-> DSI's app "INFLATION" below)
Examples
Inflation over the past decades for selected groups of developing countries:
Harmonised index of communication prices for selected EU countries:
Note
Run your retrieval by keyword search for both expressions separately: "inflation" and "consumer price index".
Inflation (special application services)
To monitor inflation for approx. 220 countries and country groups on a monthy and annual basis, DSI provides a special app on your mobile devices:
All graphics and tables are created with 