1 A Review of Reviews Ninety Years of Professional Thinking About the Consumer Price Index

It is not often that a price index, a tool of statisticians, becomes an object of political debate. —Ostrander 1944, 849 The theory of price indexes is usually left to specialists, but when a suspicion that something has gone wrong is coupled with the possibility of large political and fi scal benefi ts from fi xing it, the topic can move into the limelight. —Deaton 1998, 37 1.