The Consumer Price Index Reference Paper: Concepts and Procedures; Updating Based on 1978 Expenditures

J.V. Rahilly was an engineering librarian in Ontario.

The Preface states that this book is “intended as a basic guide for users of the Canadian Consumer Price Index (CPI) ... it attempts to detail and explain all aspects of the CPI, beginning with its scope and concepts, through the procedures of data collection and computation, to the final presentation and interpretation of the Index.” It quite clearly shows how the basket is put together, how items are weighted, what is “secret” in terms of data collection, and what is open. In the CPI there are hundreds of sub-categories. For example, the expenses of “reading” form 0.8 out of 100.0 scale values. Newspapers are calculated as part of reading, and they weigh in at 0.34 out of 100. Thus when the price of a newspaper goes up, the ratio of its increase is calculated on the basis of “0.34” of the CPI. The appendices take up more than a third of the pages here, but they are full of numerical data elements and technical information plus various breakdowns of the CPI into the component sub-categories. A glossary of symbols and terms concludes the work, which has been presented throughout in parallel columns of French and English text. The book is indispensable for any statistician or library dealing with Canadian statistics.