Nordic Statistical Meeting 26.-28.8.2019, Helsinki

1. Icelandic Wage Price Index
30 years of experience and questioning
10/18/2019 Margrét Vala Gylfadóttir, Statistics Iceland 1

2. Purpose and history
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3. Data source and publications
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4. Trusted methods or what?
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5. Method
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• Törnqvist index formula – lower
aggregation:
• Matched sample model.
• Smallest aggregate being the item
itself, changes in hourly wage.
• Laspeyres index formula – top
level aggregation
• Sub-indices are aggregated.
• Weights updated once a year.

6. Sampling errors
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7. Changes in population and live cycle effect
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8. Combining index information over time
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-0,01
0
0,01
0,02
0,03
0,04
0,05
0,06
0 0,01 0,02 0,03 0,04 0,05
Variation of chained index
Variation of direct index

9. Conclusion
• The data is of good quality.
• The method is a standard method.
• Recommendations:
• A systematic sample refresh should be applied to accommodate for
dynamical changes.
• Estimating the size and accumulation of effects due to education and
length of service in the dataset.
• Paper to be presented very soon.
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10. Thank you!
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