1887

OECD Statistics Working Papers

The OECD Statistics Working Paper Series - managed by the OECD Statistics and Data Directorate – is designed to make available in a timely fashion and to a wider readership selected studies prepared by staff in the Secretariat or by outside consultants working on OECD projects. The papers included are of a technical, methodological or statistical policy nature and relate to statistical work relevant to the organisation. The Working Papers are generally available only in their original language - English or French - with a summary in the other.

Joint Working Papers:

Testing the evidence, how good are public sector responsiveness measures and how to improve them? (with OECD Public Governance Directorate)

Measuring Well-being and Progress in Countries at Different Stages of Development: Towards a More Universal Conceptual Framework (with OECD Development Centre)

Measuring and Assessing Job Quality: The OECD Job Quality Framework (with OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs)

Forecasting GDP during and after the Great Recession: A contest between small-scale bridge and large-scale dynamic factor models (with OECD Economics Directorate)

Decoupling of wages from productivity: Macro-level facts (with OECD Economics Directorate)

Which policies increase value for money in health care? (with OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs)

Compiling mineral and energy resource accounts according to the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) 2012 (with OECD Environment Directorate)

English

Seasonal adjustment of CPIs during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

This paper examines the presence of seasonality in CPI in 36 OECD economies that provide monthly CPI data and reviews the properties of standard methods, namely X-13 and TRAMO-SEATS, in performing the adjustment. Evidence from statistical tests points to the presence of seasonality in headline CPI and its components, with stronger seasonality in some components. There are also indications of changes in seasonal pattern from 1980 to 2022, but it is not systematic across countries. Simulations suggest that differences between the two methods are small when applied to CPI in OECD countries in normal times. Differences between the direct (adjusting all-item CPI and components independently) and the indirect (aggregating the seasonally adjusted components) approaches are also minimal when using the 12 divisions of the 1999 COICOP classification, limiting the need for a reconciliation method. Although large shocks should in theory affect seasonal adjustment, there is no strong evidence of a change in CPI seasonal patterns following the COVID-19 pandemic. This issue needs, however, to be revisited once the effects of the shock, including its impact on inflation have fully dissipated. The extent of revisions implied by the seasonal adjustment should be among the criteria for choosing a seasonal adjustment method, as CPI is often used in indexation and legal documents. The paper provides a summary of how communication is handled by selected OECD countries and provides a list of best practices that can be drawn upon by a National Statistical Office aiming to publish seasonally adjusted CPI.

English

Keywords: seasonal adjustments, CPI
JEL: C82: Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs / Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Macroeconomic Data; Data Access; C43: Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics / Index Numbers and Aggregation; Leading Indicators; E31: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles / Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
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