Local Price Index Research Articles

Trends in Cost Attributable to Kidney Transplantation Evaluation and Waiting List Management in the United States, 2012-2017

While recent policy reforms aim to improve access to kidney transplantation for patients with end-stage kidney disease, the cost implications of kidney waiting list expansion are not well understood. The Organ Acquisition Cost Center (OACC) is the mechanism by which Medicare reimburses kidney transplantation programs, at cost, for costs attributable to kidney transplantation evaluation and waiting list management, but these costs have not been well described to date. To describe temporal trends in mean OACC costs per kidney transplantation and to identify factors most associated with cost. This economic evaluation included all kidney transplantation waiting list candidates and recipients in the United States from 2012 to 2017. A population-based study of cost center reports was conducted using data from all Center of Medicare & Medicaid-certified transplantation hospitals. Data analysis was conducted from June to August 2021. Year, local price index, transplantation and waiting list volume of transplantation program, and comorbidity burden. Mean OACC costs per kidney transplantation. In 1335 hospital-years from 2012 through 2017, Medicare's share of OACC costs increased from $0.95 billion in 2012 to $1.32 billion in 2017 (3.7% of total Medicare End-Stage Renal Disease program expenditure). Median (IQR) OACC costs per transplantation increased from $81 000 ($66 000 to $103 000) in 2012 to $100 000 ($82 000 to $125 000) in 2017. Kidney organ procurement costs contributed to 36% of mean OACC costs per transplantation throughout the study period. During the study period, transplantation hospitals experienced increases in kidney waiting list volume, kidney waiting list active volume, kidney transplantation volume, and comorbidity burden. For a median-sized transplantation program, mean OACC costs per transplantation decreased with more transplants (-$3500 [95% CI, -$4300 to -$2700] per 10 transplants; P < .001) and increased with year ($4400 [95% CI, $3500 to $5300] per year; P < .001), local price index ($1900 [95% CI, $200 to $3700] per 10-point increase; P = .03), patients listed active on the waiting list ($3100 [95% CI, $1700 to $4600] per 100 patients; P < .001), and patients on the waiting list with high comorbidities ($1500 [9% CI, $600 to $2500] per 1% increase in proportion of waitlisted patients with the highest comorbidity score; P = .002). In this study, OACC costs increased at 4% per year from 2012 to 2017 and were not solely attributable to the cost of organ procurement. Expanding the waiting list will likely contribute to further increases in the mean OACC costs per transplantation and substantially increase Medicare liability.

Are Poor Cities Cheap for Everyone? Non‐Homotheticity and the Cost of Living Across U.S. Cities

This paper shows that the products and prices offered in markets are correlated with local income‐specific tastes. To quantify the welfare impact of this variation, I calculate local price indexes micro‐founded by a model of non‐homothetic demand over thousands of grocery products. These indexes reveal large differences in how wealthy and poor households perceive the choice sets available in wealthy and poor cities. Relative to low‐income households, high‐income households enjoy 40 percent higher utility per dollar expenditure in wealthy cities, relative to poor cities. Similar patterns are observed across stores in different neighborhoods. Most of this variation is explained by differences in the product assortment offered, rather than the relative prices charged, by chains that operate in different markets.

Conflict in Africa during COVID-19: Social Distancing, Food Vulnerability and Welfare Response

We study the effect of social distancing, food vulnerability, welfare and labour COVID-19 policy responses on riots, violence against civilians and food-related conflicts. Our analysis uses georeferenced data for 24 African countries with monthly local prices and real-time conflict data reported in the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) from January 2015 until early May 2020. Lockdowns and recent welfare policies have been implemented in light of COVID-19, but in some contexts also likely in response to ongoing conflicts. To mitigate the potential risk of endogeneity, we use instrumental variables. We exploit the exogeneity of global commodity prices, and three variables that increase the risk of COVID-19 and efficiency in response such as countries colonial heritage, male mortality rate attributed to air pollution and prevalence of diabetes in adults. We find that the probability of experiencing riots, violence against civilians, food-related conflicts and food looting has increased since lockdowns. Food vulnerability has been a contributing factor. A 10% increase in the local price index is associated with an increase of 0.7 percentage points in violence against civilians. Nonetheless, for every additional anti-poverty measure implemented in response to COVID-19 the probability of experiencing violence against civilians, riots and food-related conflicts declines by approximately 0.2 percentage points. These anti-poverty measures also reduce the number of fatalities associated with these conflicts. Overall, our findings reveal that food vulnerability has increased conflict risks, but also offer an optimistic view of the importance of the state in providing an extensive welfare safety net.

To measure globally, aggregate locally: Urban land, submarkets, and biased estimates of the housing stock

AbstractThis article highlights the role of land and housing submarkets in the construction of aggregate house price indexes and in the estimated value of the housing stock. We document idiosyncratic house price appreciation and sales volumes across submarkets within metropolitan areas that result in a sample of sold homes that are representative neither of the housing stock nor its appreciation over time. Commonly used aggregate price indexes, like the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and Case‐Shiller indexes, fail to capture these local dynamics and produce indexes and estimates of the value of the stock that are biased. Our approach is to build “locally‐pooled” indexes and then weight these local price indexes by their submarket's share of the housing stock to estimate our metropolitan‐level index. This allows for more accurate movements in urban land prices, which is especially important in higher cost land markets. We show traditional globally pooled indexes exhibit significant bias. This may complicate research that makes use of the traditional house price indexes.

Precios, salarios y carga laboral durante el siglo xviii. El caso de la villa de El Burgo de Osma (Soria)

This article provides new evidence regarding the evolution of prices and wages in the eighteenth century. Unlike most of the works so far available, this focuses on a small population core, the episcopal town of El Burgo de Osma (Soria), located in an area also lesser studied, the high valley of the Duero. The local price index describes the same trends and cycles as those of other larger population. On the other hand, an analysis of the relationship between real wages and the workload indicates that in the course of the eighteenth century there was a remarkable increase in work.

AN ECONOMIC STUDY FOR IRAQ'S RICE IMPORTS FOR THE PERIOD (1990-2015) and PREDICTION FOR THE PERIED (2016 – 2023)

This research aims at predicting the imported quantities of rice in Iraq for the period 2016-2023 through the use of the self-regression model (VAR). The values ​​of explanatory variables (local production, population, national income, local price index, of rice consumption), where the predicted values ​​for each of these variables are estimated separately using the moving average method based on the data of the last 10 years. The research concluded that there is no difference between the actual values ​​and the predicted values ​​in the short term. This is the problem that emerged from the research which is the mismatch between these values. Therefore, the research recommended that the short term forecasts be adopted in the formulation of import policies, especially after the validity of the model To predict after testing the predictive power of the model.

Global imbalances revisited: The transfer problem and transport costs in monopolistic competition

We study the welfare effects of trade imbalances in a two-sector model of monopolistic competition. As in perfect competition, a trade surplus involves an income transfer to the deficit country and possibly a terms-of-trade deterioration. Unlike the conventional wisdom, however, trade imbalances do not impose any double burden on surplus countries. This is because of a production-delocation effect, which leads to a reduction in the local price index. In the presence of intermediate goods, new results arise: A trade surplus may lead to an appreciation of the exchange rate, to a terms-of-trade improvement and even to a welfare increase. Numerical simulations show that, under realistic assumptions about preferences and technology, the beneficial price-index effect can significantly reduce the direct cost of the transfer.

Diferencias regionales en el costo de vida en Argentina a comienzos del siglo xx

The analysis of the living standards in Argentina in the late 19th and early 20th century is hindered by the lack of a consistent comparison of prices across regions. In this article we calculate price indexes of food for several cities in several years between 1903 and 1912 using data from the Bulletins of the National Labor Department.Although local price indices follow a pattern with common characteristics, both the price levels and the inflation rates are quite specific of each province. Cities in the central region of the country and with a relatively large population (Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Cordoba) have lower price levels than the cities in the peripheral areas of the country and with a smaller size (San Juan, Posadas, Jujuy). Moreover, those areas with larger sectors of livestock and wheat production tend to have lower prices of meat and bread and, consequently, lower price levels.

The effects of transport infrastructure on regional economic development: A simulated spatial overlapping generations model with heterogenous skill

As a result of public investment, lower freight transport costs tend to translate into lower local price indices and are associated with equilibria characterized by higher output and consumption. In this paper we investigate an additional effect to these trade gains, namely the gains from better spatial matching in the labor market. We simulate a two-region Spatial OLG model in which agents are heterogeneous in terms of skill. Under repeated simulation experiments, we show that, for high household relocation frictions, the possibility of interregional commuting can be seen as an alternative way to realize the potential matching effects. For high levels of skill heterogeneity and a plausible parametric input, a steady state in which labor matching is realized through commuting can be associated with up to 10% higher per capita output, compared to the one with homogenous labor, in which only gains from trade are feasible.

A Semiparametric Method for Estimating Local House Price Indices

Spatial autoregressive hedonic models utilize house prices lagged in space and time to produce local house price indices, for example, the spatial and temporal autoregressive (STAR) model might be used this way. This paper complements these models with a semiparametric approach, the Local Regression Model (LRM). The greater flexibility of the LRM may allow it to identify space–time asymmetries missed by other models. The LRM is fitted to 49,511 sales from 1972Q1 to 1991Q2 in Fairfax County, Virginia. The local price indices display plausible and significant variations over space and time. The LRM price indices in selected neighborhoods are shown to differ significantly from those in some other neighborhoods. A new method for estimating standard errors addresses an overlooked problem common to all local price indices: how to evaluate the amount of noise in the estimates. Out‐of‐sample prediction errors demonstrate that LRM adds significant information to the hedonic model.

A Semi Parametric Method for Estimating Local House Price Indices

Spatial autoregressive hedonic models utilize house prices lagged in space and time to produce local house price indices: e.g., the STAR model might be used this way. This paper complements these models with a semiparametric approach, the Local Regression Model (LRM) designed to use large databases to produce neighborhood price indices and confidence intervals at each point on a spatial. The greater flexibility of the LRM may allow it to identify space-time asymmetries missed by other models. The LRM is fitted to 49,511 sales from 1972Q1 - 1991Q2 in Fairfax County, Virginia. The local price indices display plausible and significant variations over space and time. On average, LRM indices are the same as a standard hedonic price index for the entire county. The LRM price indices in selected neighborhoods are shown to differ significantly from those in some other neighborhoods. A new method for estimating standard errors addresses an overlooked problem common to all local price indices: How to evaluate the amount of noise in the estimates. Out-of-sample prediction errors demonstrate that LRM adds significant information to the hedonic model. Moran's I-statistics suggest that future research could usefully add a STAR or spatial autocorrelation model to the LRM.

The Hierarchical Trend Model for Property Valuation and Local Price Indices

This paper presents a hierarchical trend model (HTM) for selling prices of houses, addressing three main problems: the spatial and temporal dependence of selling prices and the dependency of price index changes on housing quality. In this model the general price trend, cluster-level price trends, and specific characteristics play a role. Every cluster, a combination of district and house type, has its own price development. The HTM is used for property valuation and for determining local price indices. Two applications are provided, one for the Breda region, and one for the Amsterdam region, lying respectively south and north in The Netherlands. For houses in these regions the accuracy of the valuation results are presented together with the price index results. Price indices based on the HTM are compared to a standard hedonic index and an index based on weighted median selling prices published by national brokerage organization. It is shown that, especially for small housing market segments the HTM produces price indices which are more accurate, detailed, and up-to-date.

Why Can't Developing Countries Borrow from Abroad in Their Currency?

This paper analyzes the different implications of denominating foreign debt in a tradable or in a nontradable good, analogous to foreign currency and a local price index respectively. While the price of tradables is exogenous to a small open economy, the price of nontradables reacts to the shocks it experiences, being high (low) following a good (bad) shock. Since defaults are correlated with large real depreciations, debt denominated in the tradable good will have a relatively higher face-value in those states. If there are large deviations from strict creditor seniority enforcement, a nontradable denominated debt holder's claim on a borrower's bankrupt firm can be expropriated through additional borrowing denominated in the tradable good. This dilution mechanism is an inefficient expropriation technology, whose cost is borne by the borrower in equilibrium. That discourages the use of nontradable denominated instruments, even though they can improve international risk sharing and help prevent financial crises.

Towards a System of Local House Price Indices

This paper argues that understanding of the performance and price structure of urban housing markets in the UK would be enhanced by limited investment in comprehensive systems for collecting data on housing transactions. These data would allow the construction of reliable and accurate indices at different levels of spatial aggregation. The empirical part of the paper uses data from the Western Australian Valuer General's Office to illustrate the data requirements and practical considerations in the construction of indices. The dataset provides comprehensive information on property attributes and the sales history of individual transactions and allows a comparison of the accuracy of a number of variants on the hedonic and repeat-sales index methods. The evidence suggests repeat-sales indices can be constructed on less detailed data with little loss of accuracy. The paper concludes by suggesting that repeat-sales methods, although largely ignored in the UK to date, lend themselves well to the development of a system of local price indices using the information recorded by the Land Registry.

Geographic Variation in Consumer Prices: Implications for Local Price Indices

Previous research has established that considerable variation exists in consumer prices both between states and within states. This paper extends that research by specifying and implementing a procedure for estimating price indices in localities within one state, North Carolina. The paper makes a number of improvements over previous work, including examining geographic variation in the prices of individual products and services, estimating the association between local prices and national prices, and testing the potential capitalization of local taxes and public output into local prices.

Forecasting Expenditures for Library Materials

Forecasting expenditures requires the librarian to develop competencies in a number of areas. These areas include economic conditions, the publishing industry, collection development policies and money management. Developing competencies in these areas involves general reading on economic issues, focused reading on the publishing industry and the use and/or development of national and local price indexes for significant categories of materials collected by the library. Command of various techniques for forecasting payments and managing funds is necessary to fully expend without overexpending the annual materials budget.

Alternative Techniques for Developing Real Estate Price Indexes

T HE rapid rate of increase in the prices of houses in recent years has resulted in renewed interest in trends in residential real estate. A widely quoted study by the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies (Solomon, et al., 1977) showed that in 1976 only 27% of families could afford to buy the median priced new home, a significant change from 1970 when 46% of families were able to make such a purchase. Such rapid changes could result in significant income redistribution effects, and policy proposals have been numerous. To assess these trends and proposals, it is necessary to have accurate methods of developing residential real estate price indexes. Most real estate indexes have been based on the average or median selling price in each year for new or used houses. Yet there may exist substantial differences in the houses on the market at different times, so such indexes contain quality changes as well as pure price changes. Because housing is a highly heterogeneous commodity, the measurement of quality-adjusted price changes has proven difficult. Such measurement is desirable not simply because of the recent significant price changes in the real estate market, but also because economists have found property values to be one of the best sources of information on goods for which markets do not exist. Although in the past cross-sectional studies have generally been used for this purpose, questions remain concerning the timing of the impacts. Comparisons of real estate price indexes can provide insights into the dynamics of such effects. Among the techniques suggested for developing quality-adjusted price indexes, approaches using hedonic regressions and repeat-sale regressions appear to be the most promising. In this paper, alternative local price indexes are developed using modifications of the hedonic and repeat-sale techniques. For the case considered, the two independent techniques provide statistically identical indexes of the real price of housing. The estimated rate of increase in house prices using the hedonic and repeat-sale techniques is substantially lower than the non-quality adjusted rate implied by the change in average selling price.