Changing Methodology of Measuring Growth and Inflation: The Case of Ukraine

Abstract

The case of Ukraine is used to expose conceptual and statistical problems of measuring growth and inflation in the FSU countries whose methodologies resemble an offspring of a new western methodology and an old Soviet technique. The role of designing the CPI sample and incorporating new goods into an existing market basket is discussed from both theoretical and applied standpoints. Other methodological issues include weighting procedures, aggregation methods, and consistency of price and growth indices at different levels of aggregation. Directions for improvement in statistical data, sampling, and CPI computation have been identified.