[lbo-talk] hedonic pricing update

[Shane Mage]

Doug wrote:
>...I discovered that they stopped publishing the real dollar figure 
>because they wanted to discourage people from adding up the 
>components to get the aggregates, because chain-type numbers aren't 
>additive. (Add them up, subtract from the aggregate, and you get the 
>residual.) They still use the figures internally, and publish a 
>chain-type quantity index for the series they discontinued 
>publishing the real dollar amounts of. The BEA still stands by its 
>hedonic technique.

This makes no sense.  An "aggregate," by definition, is the sum of
its "components."

Shane Mage

"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all 
things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even 
downright silly.

When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all 
things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true."  (N. 
Weiner)