Abstract
The need for a “standard of value” or “general level of prices” as a means of adjusting contracts and wages had been proposed by a number of commentators in the nineteenth century, as Chap. 3 described. However, it wasn’t until 1914 that this was achieved in the UK, and then, only in an imperfect form. This chapter describes the developments that took place to establish the data needed for an index of retail prices—household budget shares and the prices of goods and services.
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O’Neill, R., Ralph, J., A. Smith, P. (2017). The Development of the Cost of Living Index: 1880 to 1946. In: Inflation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64125-6_5
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