Inflation in China

As a follow up to my post on consumer price inflation in the US here are trends in the last couple of years in China:Credit: CEIC.Whereas the US chart showed the levels of price indices this chart shows the rate of inflation. Inflation is China is currently at 4.9%. The fastest rising category is food, which has a much bigger budget share than the in the US, as is typical of developing economies.

Consumer Price Inflation in the USA

The graph shows the increase in consumer prices over the last decade for the eight subcategories in the consumer price index (CPI) in the US and energy. Energy isn't a separate subcategory in the CPI but is included in the transport and housing categories. As you can see, energy prices are very volatile but have increased by more than other spending categories over this decade. The graph gives

iPad Pricing

Apple charges AUD 130 more for the 32GB iPad than for the 16GB iPad. Yet a 16GB flash memory card can be bought for as little as AUD45. The premium in the US is USD 100. Interestingly, the premium for a 64GB iPad relative to a 32GB iPad is also AUD 130/USD 100. The lowest price I found for a 32GB flash drive was AUD 89. It looks like Apple makes much more profit off the higher memory versions

Survey Paper on Estimating Consumer Demand Systems

If you are looking for a nice survey paper on estimating static consumer demand systems (I was) Apostolos Serletis and William Barnett put one out a couple of years ago in the Journal of Econometrics. It's a nicely organized paper that should be understandable to anyone who's done the basic graduate level micro-economics and econometrics courses. In other words, it is really approachable compared

Shifts in the Composition of Output

This is the penultimate section of the paper that I'll post. Now I'm going on to rewriting the conclusions and then a massive edit. I've got 15,000 words and 179 references!Shifts in the Composition of OutputOutput mix typically changes over the course of economic development. In the earlier phases of development there is a shift away from agriculture towards heavy industry, while in the later

Artificial Meat

I'm very skeptical that this would be an economic proposition any time soon. You'd think it would be a lot easier to produce artificial milk - engineer some micro-organisms to secrete cow milk. Instead we still go to the trouble of raising cows, milking them, and transporting the perishable product to market. I'd like this to be true - it has big environmental and possibly ethical advantages.