Lesson Plan

Measuring the Economy - Inflation


I. Definitions
- what is inflation?
- what is an index?

II. How are price indexes constructed?
- determine the market basket
- assign weights
- calculate aggregate numbers for each year
- choose a base year and divide each aggregate number by base year aggregate number
- multiply each resultant number by 100
- real versus nominal variables
- definition of each
- using price indexes to get a real variable
- example
- example of calculating a price index
- types of price indexes
- consumer price index (cpi)
- producer price index (ppi)
- GDP deflator

III. Costs & Benefits of Inflation
- Repricing costs
- Distortion costs
- who wins from inflation?
- who loses from inflation?

IV. Types of Inflation
- Demand Pull Inflation
- Cost Push Inflation
- Expectational Inflation