Price and Quantity Index Numbers

Price and quantity indices are important, much-used measuring instruments, and it is therefore necessary to have a good understanding of their properties. When it was published, this book is the first comprehensive text on index number theory since Irving Fisher’s 1922 The Making of Index Numbers. The book covers intertemporal and interspatial comparisons; ratio- and difference-type measures; discrete and continuous time environments; and upper- and lower-level indices. Guided by economic insights, this book develops the instrumental or axiomatic approach. There is no role for behavioural assumptions. In addition to subject matter chapters, two entire chapters are devoted to the rich history of the subject.

Author Biography

Bert M. Balk is Professor of Economic Measurement and Economic-Statistical Research at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, and Senior Researcher at Statistics Netherlands. Other positions that Professor Balk held at Statistics Netherlands include Chief of the Research Section in the Department for Price Statistics, Deputy Head of Department for Price Statistics, Senior Researcher in the Department of Statistical Methods/Methods and Informatics Department, Director of the Center for Research of Economic Micro-Data (CEREM), and Researcher/Consultant in the Division of Macro-Economic Statistics and Dissemination. He is the author of Industrial Price, Quantity, and Productivity Indices: The Micro-Economic Theory and an Application (1998). Professor Balk is Associate Editor of Statistica Nederlandica and the Journal of Productivity Analysis, and author of a large number of papers in learned journals.