Inflation in October stood at -0.7 percent in month-to-month relation – CASE publishes its inflation index measured in real time

CASE - Center for Social and Economic Research collects information about prices from the data from the Internet. CASE experts have determined that inflation in October stood at -0.7 percent in month-to-month relation.

"Our robots analyze the price of approx. 1400 representatives of products and services, collecting approx. 240,000 observations per month "- explains Bartosz Radzikowski from CASE. "The collected data is then grouped according to COICOP classification and weighted according to basket of weights announced by GUS (Polish Main Statistics Office). This is how we get the online CASE CPI index of consumer inflation" - he added.

About Online CASE CPI index

The research methodology of Online CASE CPI index is comparable to the CPI index prepared by GUS. It is based on a basket of inflation, consisting of 12 main categories with weights announced in the first quarter of the year. Each of the 12 categories is then broken down into smaller categories according to consumer spending in the household, based on GUS’s "Household budgets".

The main difference between CASE and GUS indexes is the data source - all observations analyzed by Online CASE CPI index come from the Internet. Currently CASE monitors approx. 50 websites and collects data from more than 3,000 stores using price comparison sites. The selected data is updated either on a daily basis, or at regular intervals, or when a change occurs (eg. electricity prices).

At present, CASE index covers approx. 80 percent of categories in the inflation basket, however the prices of goods are represented stronger than services.

“Thanks to internet robots and large data sets available online we are faster and more flexible: Online CASE CPI index may be published even within a few hours after the measurement." - says Radzikowski. "It allows us to present information about consumer inflation in almost real time. We are now planning to publish the index on a weekly basis" - he added.

Test measurements in previous months were consistent with the data from GUS. The difference did not exceed 0.3 percentage points, and general trends were the same.

"We hope that our study will show how the change in the level of prices on the Internet reflects the trends in the real economy. CASE experts assume that prices of individual products may be cheaper due to lower fixed costs (maintenance of the website is cheaper than maintenance of the store), but general trends of change should be similar. We will also check whether prices of products on the Internet react faster and harder to changes in economic conditions, as it was in the case of similar research in other countries, e.g. UK "- Radzikowski sums up.

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Read more about CASE project "Measuring consumer inflation in real time": LINK