Outline of Lectures at the Beijing Normal University

D.S. Prasada Rao

TheUniversity of Queensland

Lecture 1: Index Number Methods: Anintroduction to Axiomatic and Economic Approaches to Price Index Numbers andReal Expenditure Comparisons

Lecture 2: Methods for Spatial comparisons:Base Invariance; Transitivity; Additivity; Charactersiticity; Representativityversus comparability; Axiomatic approach; Overview of ICP

Lecture 3: Gini-Elteto-Koves-Szulc Methodfor international comparisons; Comparisons below the Basic Heading level – GEKSmethod and its variants used by Eurostat; Aggregation above the basic HeadingLevel – GEKS Method based on Fisher and Tornqvist indices(Caves-Christensen-Diewert indices)

Lecture 4: Geary-Khamis System for MultilateralComparisons; Properties including Additivity; Existence and Solutions; The Raosystem; Ikle Method; The Neary-system and the general equilibrium approach tointernational comparions; Feenstra-Rao system for real price comparisons;Feenstra-Heston-Timmer – Real Expenditure Comparisons

Lecture 5: Stochastic Approach to IndexNumbers – Rao and Selvanathan approach; Stochastic Approach based on the CPDModel; Unweighted and weighted CPD models; Aggregation below and above basicheading levels; CPD and PPP computation

Lecture 6: Spatial chanining methods;reliability of binary comparisons; spatial chaining using minimum spanningtrees; minimum distance paths; price and quantity similarity methods

Lecture 7: Extrapolation of PPPs – variousapproaches; PWT 7.1, 8.0, World Development Indicators; UQICD; Consistencybetween benchmarks

Lecture8: Computation of Regional and global inflation and growth

Lecture 9: Discussion on other research topics