This textbook integrates mathematical index theory and its application in official price statistics. It tries to bridge theory and practice, due to the apparent divergence between mathematicians with ever more sophisticated and complex models and practitioners with problems that are more and more difficult to understand without broad knowledge and some experience. The text offers an introduction into axiomatic, microeconomic and stochastic reasoning as regards index numbers, with moderately difficult mathematics. It also summarizes many ongoing discussions concerning methodological merits and demerits of specific indices, such as consumer price-, producer price-, unit value- and chain indices, in official price statistics. The book is comprehensive and presents a readable overview of a great number of topics in modern price index theory and their application in inflation measurement, deflation of aggregates in National Accounts, sampling and quality adjustment in price collection and other important though controversial issues.

The Author: Peter von der Lippe received his doctorate in economics in 1971 from Marburg University and became a professor of statistics at the University of Essen in 1976; he also teaches econometrics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He has published around one hundred articles and many books, including a book on Official Statistics that has become well known and been translated into Russian and Chinese. For over ten years, he served as trainer and course leader in the framework of the Eurostat TES-Programme (teaching staff members of European National Statistical Offices NSOs) and was a member of several committees of TES in Luxembourg. He has also delivered courses in the NSOs of most of the former Soviet Union countries on behalf of the German Statistical Office. Website: www.von-der-lippe.org