Measuring Price and Quality of Consumers' Goods

Abstract

IT IS THE ambition of every price economist to obtain price series for goods of identical quality, and it is by now generally recognized how difficult it is to realize that ambition in the consumers' goods field. There may have been a time when students of retail prices were content to say The average price of beef steak in the United States in I929 was 46 cents per pound without any qualifications as to the kind or quality of the steak, or whether the average represented all communities in the United States, or simply all cities, or what is more likely, simply all large cities. If there ever was a time when average retail prices were used in such an uncritical fashion, it certainly is past. Price controls, wage controls, and buying experiences during the war have made people in every walk of life intensely conscious of the relationship between price and quality. Difficult as it still is to provide the analyst with figures on prices of consumers' goods of constant quality, it is much easier to do so now than it was in the I92o's and in our opinion will be easier to do so in the future.