Price Index for Soviet Machinery, 1965-1986
Abstract
Soviet machinery price and output indexes published regularly in standard Soviet statistical sources are faulty to the point of being useless for analytical purposes. As an alternative, this study offers a version of a weighted aggregate price index for the entire machine-building industry (machine-building, metalworking and repair, or MBMW) for the 1965-1986 period based on a method specially designed to accommodate the limited available Soviet output and price statistics. The study is limited to the explanation of the method employed in construction of the price index and of the underlying data, a description of corrections for certain identified biases, and the examination and testing of the results. Because of time and space constraints, it does not examine existing Western and Soviet price indexes or the rich literature on Soviet machinery prices and price information. This work was started while the author was at the Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, under the Ford Visiting Research Professorship program. The author is grateful to Abraham Becker and Gregory Hildebrandt of RAND, and to Professors Morris Bornstein, Gregory Grossman, and Yasushi Toda for their extensive comments; and to Clifford Gaddy, Timothy Heleniak, and Ludmilla Pashina for their assistance with data collection and processing. The responsibility for the methodology developed in the study and the errors is, of course, the author's.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA256813
Entities
People
- Vladimir G. Treml
Organizations
- RAND Corporation