Statistical Capacity Building of Official Statisticians in Practice: Case of the Consumer Price Index

This article focuses on the issue of statistical capacity building of official statisticians using the case of the consumer price index (CPI) as an illustrative example. Although used for indexation of salaries, pensions, and social welfare benefits, but also as an approximation of the general inflation rate, there are several unresolved methodological issues associated with CPI’s calculation. Apart from the choice among two alternative concepts, the challenge of how to include owner-occupied housing (OOH) in CPI has also not been adequately resolved yet. Analysis in the article is based on Slovenian data. The results show that accuracy of the CPI significantly improves if it is calculated using one of the superlative and symmetric formulas, and that it makes sense to include OOH in CPI using the total acquisitions approach. The analysis further indicates that the choice of the index formula for calculating CPI has a much greater impact on the CPI value than inclusion of OOH. Academic research findings such as these should not remain unknown to the wide professional community of official statisticians. Formal channels for knowledge transfer from academia to official statistics providers should be established to facilitate continuous statistical capacity building of official statisticians.