Reinko

August Retail Sales YoY Increase Powered by Food and Gas

As far as I know statistical reality, retail sales are a so called 'value index' so it is not a price index or a quantity index.

Value indices are very simple, you do not have all that Paasche or Laspeyres stuff that come along with the price and quantity indices.

So life is simple to understand: How did the census bureau filter out the prices? Do they have some deflator just like we have with the GDP?

Do they use core inflation or do they have a wider estimate of price climbs and if so; is it a consumer price deflator or a wide economy deflator?

I think the title of this article says it all:

August Retail Sales YoY Increase Powered by Food and Gas

Question: Do you really believe more goods and services are transported if food and gas are truly filtered out from the statistics?