C onsumer P rice I ndex

1. Consumer Price Index Evan Creedon, Catherine Cropp, Luke Forker, Ned Moore, and Eric Hostvedt

2. CPI is the changes in the prices for goods and services. What is CPI?

3. 1) What kind of number does the indicator represent? • The number is an index that measures the average of prices of goods and services purchased by consumers. It is used to track inflation within a country’s economy.

4. 2) Who Measures CPI • CPI is measured through BSL Data Collectors, also known as Economic Assistants.

5. BLS directors contact thousands of stores every month. Their assistants go to retail stores, service establishments, rental units, doctor’s offices all over the nation. They track thousands of items and their price histories to study the changes made in the CPI. Economic Assistants record about 80,000 items every month, used to represent scientifically selected samples of the prices paid by consumers 3) How do Econ Assistants Measure CPI

6. CPI generally speaks to the inflation that consumers experience through their purchases of everyday good. That means that there are a couple of variables in determining what news is good news. In general, a steady increase in inflation is good for the economy, so a small but gradual increase in the CPI is good news. However, a dramatic spike in inflation is to be perceived as bad news. However, generally speaking, a decrease in the CPI should be welcomed as good news. To sum up the info, a steady increase or a decrease is good news, while a dramatic spike is bad news. Questions 4:

7. Inflation has been defined as a process of continuously rising prices or equivalently, of a continuously falling value of money. CPI can create a good but not totally accurate form of the sense of inflation in the social media. The CPI measures inflation as experienced by consumers in their day-to-day living expenses. The CPI is also a good way to estimate the adjusting payments to consumers when the intent is to allow consumers to purchase at today's prices. on the contrary the Consumer Price Index can also help the views in the media and how it reflects our outputs in the market today. Again, while we publish many indexes, our broadest measure of inflation includes all items consumers purchase, including food and energy. Which is later be reflected through reports that are reported on a monthly basis. conclusions can be made about each shopper and consumer that they base their prices on each CPI price report. The CPI price reports can base their prices on this index because the CPI in overall effects the inflation of products which consumers and markets will have to adjust to this overall increase of decrease in the index. Questions 5:

8. 6) Latest Value • Since there was no data for this September 2013, the august 2013 data is the most recently released index. There was a .1 percent increase in the consumer price index.