I wish you would tell me why you think that Congress requires the BLS to use hedonic price adjustment or regression analysis using hedonics. I don't think Congress even enacted the recommendations in the report from the Boskin Commission.
I don't think Congress tells the BLS how to calculate the CPI at all. I think that members of the Senate Financing Committee sent letters to the BLS asking them to respond to the recommendations contained in the report from the Boskin Commission. The BLS agreed with some of the recommendations and not with the others.
gao.gov
If you can provide me with a citation in the US Code or any other place where Congress adopted or enacted a requirement that the BLS use hedonic price adjustment or regression analysis using hedonics, or even follow the recommendations of the Boskin Commission, please do so. I have looked and haven't found any. It's not in the US Code, which is where laws are codified. It's not in the Code of Federal Regulations, which applies to agencies. In fact, if you can give me a citation which indicates that Congress tells the BLS how to calculate the CPI, that would at least be a starting point.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, after all, is under the aegis of the Secretary of Labor, which is part of the Executive Branch (President).
Parenthetically, one interesting thing I've noticed while researching this issue is that hedonic pricing so far is only applied to apparel, computers and peripherals, some major appliances, one segment of housing, audio equipment, and a few other things, and apparently only affects a tiny fraction of the CPI. So I don't really understand why you and Magner are making such a big deal out of it. |
