Centre for Price and Inflation at Cardiff

Our aim is to influence the academic community and to inform policy through the creation of a network of researchers and policymakers from across the UK, Europe and the world.

The Centre for Price and Inflation (CPI) explores a variety of data on prices in order to develop the understanding and modelling of inflation, in addition to the behaviour of prices in relation to both firms and consumers.

The group seeks to develop the design and implementation of price-indices, right through from their theoretical underpinnings to their practical application.

The CPI research group adopts an interdisciplinary approach, which draws on economics, marketing and accounting. Our aim is to influence the academic community and to inform policy through the creation of a network of researchers and policymakers from across the UK, Europe and the world.

Current research themes

Understanding and modelling inflation as a macroeconomic phenomenon which arises from microeconomic behaviour.
Understanding and modelling the way prices and wages are determined in a way that is consistent with the microeconomic data on prices and wages.
Developing better the design of price indices both in theory and in terms of better implementation from both an economic and statistical perspective.
Integrating the behavioural approach to understand the consumer choice and the pricing behaviour of firms.
Relating the micro data on inflationary expectations to the behaviour of consumers and inflation.
Behavioural analysis of cognitive styles and consumer innovativeness in a range of areas such as brand choice, technology consumer behaviour, technology acceptance and electronic marketing services.

Collaborative research

Members of the CPI group collaborate with a range of academic and non-academic partners. Examples include:

Banque de France: Professor Huw Dixon was a Visiting Scholar funded by the Fondation Banque de France on the project ‘Nominal rigidities in France. Testing different pricing behaviour’ (2008-2010).
Office for National Statistics: ‘Testing Item Selection Procedures on TNS Data’ (2011-2012).
Kun Tian has been the principal investigator for both the China National Social Science Foundation project ‘Price rigidity and inflation dynamics under a DSGE framework’ (2011-2014) and the Social Science Foundation of Hunan Province China project ‘Study of price setting models’ (2010- 2012).
Peking University and Xiangtan University: Kun Tian is part of a cross-institutional team managing a micro price dataset from the biggest Chinese online shopping website (Taobao.com).
Bank of England: Professor Huw Dixon was an external consultant on a project with Stephen Millard, entitled ‘How should we respond to sector-specific shocks?’ (2010-2012).