Price Indexes (12) Statistical Monopoly

One reason for the concern about the validity of price inedexes is that we do not have a free market for statistics. Monopoly governments have crowded out most private operators, so users have very little choice.

If the government stopped producing statistics, there might be a market for privately produced statistics. If inflation of the money supply continued, I suspect that there would still be a demand for price indexes and measures of GDP estimated by private suppliers.

Private production would be preferable, as any incentive to cheat would be removed. However, we would still need independent private experts to monitor the work of the private statisticians to assess the quality of their work.