A Practical Approach to choosing Formulae for Economic Index Numbers

Traditional axiomatic, economic and stochastic approaches to choosing a formula for economic index numbers are based on theoretical considerations, with little regard to whether they reflect the actual circumstances affecting the markets to which they relate. This paper presents an approach to index number formulation based on how markets operate and presents a general, parameter-based formula for price and quantity indices. Two variants of this general formula cater for the “substitution effect” in different ways and one of these variants provides a practical expression for an economic-theoretic index based on purchasers' revealed preferences. Another variant applies this approach to short-term inflation indices. A final variant provides a straightforward means of estimating purchasing power parities for spatial indices. The analysis also emphasises the importance in National Accounts of using coherent price and quantity indices, whose products generate the corresponding value indices.

A Methodological Approach to Evaluate Structural Building Projects Through the Environmental Economic Index

The construction industry has a relevant social and economic function and has become fundamental to achieving the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This industry contributes significantly to global CO2 emissions due to embodied and operating energy. There are methodologies to evaluate them, but they lack integration with other variables. In the case of buildings and assessing safety and costs, environmental assessment needs to be incorporated; current methodologies are complex to implement and, in general, costly in terms of economic and human resources. This research proposes the Environmental Economic Index (EEI) to evaluate structural building projects and support decision-making, obtained from a simplified methodology. In the case study, located in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, the same building structure was designed to subject to different operational loads and lateral forces, with structural concrete and structural steel. For this building, the concrete structure subject to seismic actions had a better result when estimating the EEI and comparing it with the other structural alternatives. The contribution of this work is to develop a simplified methodology to evaluate structural projects in the design phase, which integrates economic, environmental, and safety variables and supports decision-making in designers and real estate developers.

High-Frequency Data and a Weekly Economic Index during the Pandemic

This paper describes a weekly economic index (WEI) developed to track the rapid economic developments associated with the onset of and policy response to the novel coronavirus in the United States. The WEI, with its ten component series, tracks the overall economy. Comparing the contributions of the WEI's components in the 2008 and 2020 recessions reveals differences in how the two events played out at a high frequency. During the 2020 collapse and recovery, it provides a benchmark to interpret similarities and differences of novel indicators with shorter samples and/or nonstationary coverage, such as mobility indexes or credit card spending.

Research on the Performance of Solar Aided Power Generation System Based on Annular Fresnel Solar Concentrator

A solar-aided power generation (SAPG) system effectively promotes the high efficiency and low cost utilization of solar energy. In this paper, the SAPG system is represented by conventional coal-fired units and an annular Fresnel solar concentrator (AFSC) system. The annular Fresnel solar concentrator system is adopted to generate solar steam to replace the extraction steam of the turbine. According to the steam–water matrix equation and improved Flugel formula, the variable conditions simulation and analysis of the thermo-economic index were proposed by Matlab. Furthermore, in order to obtain the range of small disturbance, the method of partial replacement is used, that is, the extraction steam of the turbine is replaced from 0 to 100% with a step size of 20%. In this work, a SAPG system is proposed and its thermo-economic index and small disturbance scope are analyzed. The results show that the SAPG system is energy-saving, and the application scope of small disturbance is related to the quantity of the extraction steam and evaluation index.