Search

There is a widespread consensus that the national statistics on inflation were manipulated by the Argentinean government from 2006 to 2015. The best known tool to run a forensic analysis of this claim is to check for the validity of Benford's law in the data series. We find that indeed, the inflation for that period fails to satisfy this statistical regularity. We further compare this behavior to that of Argentina's inflation series for the same period but recorded independently of the government; to that of the national records of 1943–2006, as well as to historical series of other countries. We find again that Argentina in 2006–2015 is the only one in our sample that can be singled out as candidate for statistical manipulation. Alternative hypotheses for why the inflation series failed to satisfy Benford's law can be formulated. One is that, it may be due to rounding price level figures to the significant digits. Or that it is due to changes in the base years which leads to splicing different series of general level of prices. We consider these alternative hypotheses and run simulations to assess them. We find that, independently of these possible changes in the underlying series of prices, the ensuing series of its variations, i.e. the series of inflation rates, always satisfies Benford's law. Therefore we can claim that, indeed, inflation data was tampered with in Argentina for an entire decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using archival and primary source evidence, this chapter introduces the first real wage series from 1891 to 1930 for Brazil's most important immigrant and industrial city, São Paulo. This is the first price series, nominal wage series, and real wage series for the city that covers the duration of the Old Republic. While scholars look to Rio de Janeiro evidence to compare Brazil's cost of living to other southern cone and immigrant-receiving countries, it is preferable to use evidence from the primary destination city. Price deviations between the two cities underscore the need for these series. The results show foodstuff prices increased steadily over the period and more dramatically in the period during and after World War I. Hedonic wage regressions show hourly wages for unskilled, low-skilled, and medium-skilled workers did not increase accordingly. While the decline in real wages tapered off in the 1920s, real wages across skill levels did not recover to prewar levels. This new index suggests the city of São Paulo's labor market was more integrated with Buenos Aires's than with Rio de Janeiro's and that Paulistano real wages did not recover in the 1920s to the extent that they did in other southern cone cities. Given these results, the puzzle as to why migrants continued to flock to the city prove more intriguing. The results also suggest that Vargas-era labor legislation had the potential to greatly improve the lives of the city's working class, perhaps more so than in other cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model of a series of price increments with jumps is constructed based on a linear stochastic differential equation with a Poisson component. Some estimates of unknown parameters of the model and SDE are obtained by using the method of moments. A statistical simulation algorithm for solving an SDE with a Poisson component in general form is proposed. Results of numerical experiments are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asymmetric time series respond to innovations with one of two different rules according to whether the innovation is positive or negative. Quoted industrial prices are apparently such a series. It has been observed that when market conditions change, quoted prices are not revised immediately. This delay operates more strongly against reductions in price quotations than against increases. A statistical model for such asymmetric times series is developed and analyzed. An estimation procedure is given as well as a statistical test of the hypothesis of symmetry versus the alternative of asymmetry. Asymmetric time series models are fit to several economic time series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]