Comment on W. Erwin Diewert's, 'Index Number Theory Using Differences Rather Than Ratios'

摘要

A substantial fraction of what we know about how to construct measurements that are good approximations to the change in the cost of living owes to Irving Fisher. His Ideal price index was invented to address the vexing, although fairly narrowly defined, question of how to measure changes in the purchasing power of money. Fisher's thinking about index numbers is based on economics rather than accounting, based on prices and quantities rather than prices alone, and based, perhaps most critically, on multiplication rather than addition. Fisher's index is becoming incorporated in many aspects of the statistical system.