Time series and chain-linking

Time series

Price trends have been monitored and measured in Austria since the 18th century. A weighting scheme was first calculated in 1912 in conjunction with a consumer survey among employee households in Vienna.

The Retail Trade Price Index 1938 (RPI) was actually only calculated from the year 1948 onwards and continued until February 1959. The weightings were based on the expenditure of a working-class family of four in Vienna. The consumer basket was divided into nine main groups. After that new CPI series were compiled in 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996, 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015 each based on a Household Budget Survey conducted in the year t-1 and are divided into twelve main groups. With the publication of the CPI 2020 fourteen different index series based on the national concept are available. The CPI basket of goods and services was revised, among other sources, with data from the Household Budget Survey 2019/2020. The new basket weighting scheme is used for index production starting with January 2021.

Chain-linking

Pre-existing CPI series are traditionally chained so that historical time series can be directly compared with actual price trends. In this way price index series for long time periods are established enabling users to observe historical price trends and to apply them for indexation of long-term contractual monetary claims. Specifically, this means that the familiar CPI series continue to be calculated along the lines of the CPI 2020 and the given chaining coefficients (available only on the German Website).

Please consult our German Website for tables containing further information.

Consumer Price Indices from 1990 to 2020


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