Is Urban China’s CPI Underreported?

Abstract

Many have doubts about statistics, including the consumer price index (CPI) released by Chinese Government. We re-estimate the CPI in urban China from 1997 to 2009, with two widely accepted approaches to treating owner-occupied housing (i.e., user cost approach and consumption cost approach). The results are not considerably different from the NBS statistics, especially for recent years.

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Sun, W. (2013). Is Urban China’s CPI Underreported?. Chinese Studies, 2, 149-151. doi: 10.4236/chnstd.2013.24024.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

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