The Shifting Legitimacies of Price Measurements: Official Statistics and the Quantification of Pwofitasyon in the 2009 Social Struggle in Guadeloupe

In 2009, Guadeloupe experienced a historic 44 day-long strike against the high cost of living. The union-led collective (LKP) leading the strike used calculations and figures as a weapon to prove that players holding dominant market positions captured undue profits (“pwofitasyon”). Also, official price indexes were subjected to radical political criticism by the LKP actors. Yet, by using averages, these calculations could not account for the existence of individual abusive prices. The “statactivistic” momentum resulted in a shift of the legitimate price measurement methods. Calculation was, however, also the collective’s Achilles heel. LKP members’ use of numbers established only a temporary favourable balance of power in the negotiations. It was not enough for them to compete with the state’s calculative skills on an equal basis.

The Study of Availability, Affordability and Price Variation of Essential Antibiotics in Bangladesh

The increased prices and low availability of medicines are main obstacles to health care system in developing countries like Bangladesh. The main goal of this work is to gather and assessing the data on availability, affordability and price variations of essential antibiotics in Bangladesh. The data will help to improve the availability and affordability of essential antibiotics for the mass peoples. The present work was done using standard methodology described in guideline, “Price measurement, availability and affordability and price components of medicines. A total of eighteen essential antibiotics were surveyed and their prices and availability were determined. Prices from 2003 to 2019 were collected from different sources to make a comparative study of the price variations over the years. The overall prices of essential antibiotics are not much higher than international reference prices. The rate of increase of price from previous years is not so alarming. The numbers of manufacturing companies were collected from the Bangladesh National Formulary (BDNF) of different Volumes to compare the increasing number of manufacturers. Essential antibiotics affordability was determined by comparing the total cost of treatment of a particular disease to the monthly salary of the lowest paid unskilled laborer. There are several essential antibiotics for which the numbers of manufacturing companies are increasing in very high rate. This type of survey may be expanded to the national level for the data of different regions of Bangladesh.

Product Innovation and Price Measurement

This chapter addresses how innovation may affect price measurement—a key issue for the accuracy of measures of principal economic indicators and a long-discussed one. Two main changes related to product innovation are important in this context: new goods (which are often cheaper) are driving old goods out of the market; and new products often offer improved quality. The literature suggests that a failure to properly account for these has added 0.8 percentage points per year to the measured Consumer Price Index in the United States. Quality adjustment approaches in all OECD countries have converged towards general methodological guidelines that represent a common knowledge base. The hedonic methodology is applied in a significant number of countries and for specific categories of goods, in particular electronic products. The use of this approach is exemplified and the impact on price indexes evaluated.

The Microeconomics of Product Innovation

The prime objective of this book is the use microeconomic analysis to guide and provide insight into the generation and adoption of new products. Taking an approach that uses minimal formal mathematics, the volume initially addresses questions of definitions, sources, and extent of product innovation, differentiating between goods and services; hard and soft innovations; horizontal and vertical innovations; original, new to market, and new to firm innovations. The sources of product innovations (e.g. R&D, design, and creativity) are explored empirically, and the extent of such innovations is then pursued using survey and other data. Three chapters are devoted to the theoretical analysis of the demand for and supply of new products and to the determination of firms’ decisions to undertake product innovation. Later chapters encompass empirical evidence on the determination of the extent of product innovation, the diffusion of such innovation, the impact of product innovation on firm performance, price measurement, and welfare, while the final chapter addresses policy issues.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the book and discusses its main objective—the microeconomic analysis of product innovation—and its potential readership—third-year undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, private and public sector policy professionals—both in economics and in management and business. The chapter argues that this book will fill an important gap in the literature. It also provides an overview of subsequent chapters, summarizes their content, and describes the way they interact. In particular, it indicates that the material provided encompasses the definition of product innovation, the sources of new products, the measurement and extent of product innovation, analytical material on the demand for new products, their supply, and the incentives to product innovation, empirical material on the determination of the extent of product innovation, the diffusion or spread of product innovations, the impact of product innovation on firm performance, price measurement, and welfare and policy issues relating to product innovation.

Using index numbers for deflation in environmental accounting

Systematic trends in the general price level of goods and services are the subject of extensive measurement and significant interest among researchers, policy makers and the general public. Dynamic price measurement is also important in environmental accounting in that real measures of augmented output are required to draw inferences on sustainability. This paper computes price indices for emissions of five air pollutants in the United States. Using marginal damages, the paper computes Paasche, Laspeyres, Fisher and Tornquist index numbers for five air pollutants spanning the period 1999–2008 for use in computing real environmental accounts. Evidence of time series heterogeneity in the marginal damages is detected: marginal damages for nitrogen oxides increase by a factor of two and marginal damages for NH3 decrease by one-half. The analysis finds that nominal gross damages from air pollution in the United States decrease by 40 per cent between 1999 and 2008.