Consumer prices and expenditure patterns in Australia 1850-1914

A consumer price index is estimated for Australia for the period 1850 to 1914. This required the derivation of expenditure weights, permitting in turn comparisons of changes in the composition of expenditure patterns both across time and with nineteenth-century United States evidence, Several variants of the price index were compiled to suit different uses as well as to assess the sensitivity of price movements to reasonable changes in estimation methods. No major differences in these variants were observed over the long run. In the 1890s and 1900s, however, significant short-run differences in price movements exist between variants of the CPI.