Chained calculation

In the context of price indices, a chained calculation means a calculation is done one increment at a time and then multiplied to produce the index for the target date. The increment is usually a year. A chained calculation is in contrast to a fixed-base calculation that calculates the target in one shot. In this sense a chained calculation is "path-dependent".

The chained version of an index may require more data points in order to calculate the index for all years. To give an example, the fixed-base version of the Laspeyres index does not require quantity data for all years (only for the base year), even to calculate the index for all years [1]. In contrast, the chained version requires quantity data for all years.

Devec database

Some data in the devec database use chained values. From the MySQL prompt:

select metric,units
from data where region = 'Japan' and (metric REGEXP 'chained' or units REGEXP 'chained')
group by metric,units;

This returns:

+-------------------------------------------+---------------------------+
| metric                                    | units                     |
+-------------------------------------------+---------------------------+
| Expenditure-side real GDP at chained PPPs | 2005 international dollar |
| Expenditure-side real GDP at chained PPPs | 2011 international dollar |
| Output-side real GDP at chained PPPs      | 2005 international dollar |
| Output-side real GDP at chained PPPs      | 2011 international dollar |
+-------------------------------------------+---------------------------+

External links

• Price index § Chained vs non-chained calculations