Dr. Acharya, if you didn't read his speech, you missed his plea to you academics to give him get him some decent tools to measure price stability in today's complex world.
But how are we to know when our objective of price stability has been achieved? In price measurement, a distinction must be made between the measurement of individual prices, on the one hand, and the aggregation of those prices into indexes of the overall price level on the other. The notion of what we mean by a general price level--or more relevantly, its change--is never unambiguously defined.
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If the challenge for our statistical agencies is not to lose in their race against technology, the challenge for policymakers is to make our best judgments about the limitations of the existing statistics, as we design policies to promote the economic well-being of our nations. In confronting those challenges, both government statisticians and policymakers would benefit from additional research by you, the economics profession, into the increasingly complex conceptual and empirical issues involved with accurately measuring price and quantity.
What are you doing reading this? GET BUSY. There are Nobels to be won. |
