History of The International Price Program
The origins of the International Price Program (IPP) can be traced to a 1961 report on Federal Price Statistics prepared by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The report for Congress' Joint Economic Committee suggested that indexes be assigned to a federal statistical agency "to obtain the attention and resources for these indexes that we believe are essential." A further study undertaken for NBER by Professors Irving Kravis and Robert Lipsey gave more impetus to the project. In their study, "Price Competitiveness in World Trade," Kravis and Lipsey outlined the need for such measures and the feasibility of producing them. During this time, the Bureau's Division of Price and Index Number Research, largely because of its expertise in the development of other price measures, had also begun research on the feasibility of producing import and export price indexes. The IPP was a natural result of this research and was established in 1971.
The IPP produced its first annual international price indexes in 1973. Largely as a response to changing international economic conditions and the need on the part of both the Federal Government and the private sector to obtain these data on a more timely basis, collection and publication of international price indexes were begun on a quarterly basis in 1974. The IPP increased the commodity area coverage and detail of its indexes as more samples were initiated.
Once full coverage in the import and export goods categories was available, the Office of Management and Budget in 1982 placed the IPP indexes on its list of Principal Federal Economic Indicators together with the Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index. The IPP continued to expand by introducing selected services indexes. Various transportation services indexes were added to the IPP in the late 1980s. Research is continuing on other international services as data and resources become available. Beginning in 1989, BLS began producing a limited number of indexes on a monthly basis. With the release of March 1992 data, IPP added import locality of origin indexes, and in January 1993 began monthly publication of the major merchandise indexes. In 2005, the IPP expanded its output of import price indexes based on locality of origin to include France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Pacific Rim, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Asia Near East.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Import Price Index
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