Moody's Analytics Buffet Blog

Summary

August 2018 -- We have renamed the defunct "IPCNu" detailed consumer price index, and the 2008-base core CPI, to make room for the revived CPI dataset for Argentina (13 monthly series 2006 to 2015, impacted). (Updated 22 August 2018.)

Detail

Over the past several years INDEC, the national statistical agency of Argentina, has repeatedly altered the way in which it reports high-frequency consumer price trends. In its latest change, INDEC has resumed reporting index-type measures detailed by COICOP.

1. In response, we have renamed the previous vintage of indexes, consisting of 12 defunct series discontinued in February 2016. Legacy retrievals will elicit the "series not found" error (temporarily) but will soon retrieve the replacement series, which have inherited our standard mnemonics for this shape of dataset.

The change applies this pair of systematic rules to mnemonics (old » new):

CPI?AM.IARG » CPI?_14AM.IARG = Moody's Analytics SA supplements
CPI?UM.IARG » CPI?_14UM.IARG = As-reported NSA series

The series reside in the historical catalog (Argentina » Price » Consumer price index » Discontinued) and the changes include, for example (old » new):

CPITTAM.IARG » CPITT_14AM.IARG = [DISCONTINUED] General index, (Index Oct2013-Sep2014=100, SA)
CPITTUM.IARG » CPITT_14UM.IARG = [DISCONTINUED] General index, (NSA)
CPIHOSUM.IARG » CPIHOS_14UM.IARG = [DISCONTINUED] Housing, (NSA)

2. Another vintage of the dataset contained a core CPI (base period April 2008, runs December 2006 to December 2013). We have renamed it for the same reason:

CPICORUM.IARG » CPICOR_08UM.IARG = [DISCONTINUED] Greater Buenos Aires - Core inflation, (Index Apr2008=100, NSA)

3. At the same time, we have refurbished the metadata for two older vintages:

12 series, April 2008=100
11 series, 2013Q4=100

Sequence of events:

February 2014 -- Argentina advanced the base period for its detailed consumer price index from April 2008 to 2013Q4.
November 2014 -- Argentina advances the base period from 2013Q4 to Oct2013-Sep2014; the replacement is called the "National Urban CPI" or "IPCNu" and starts at December 2013.
February 2016 -- Argentina interrupts production of the IPCNu.
June 2016 -- Argentina replaces the IPCNu with percent-change measures. We mark our extract of the IPCNu as discontinued but do not rename, because there is no collision between mnemonics, because our mnemonics embed the type of measurement.
June 2018 -- Argentina revives index-type consumer price measures with base period Dec2016, starting at May 2016.
August 2018 -- We rename the defunct IPCNu and core CPI series to make room for the above.

See also