Overlapping lists in Eurostat comparisons

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Overlapping lists in Eurostat comparisons
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Division in country groups

• North 12 countries
• Central 11 countries
• South 10 countries
• Western-Balkan 4 countries annex to Central
  group
• Group leaders are responsible for drafting
  product lists for their groups on the basis of
  information on availability and representativity
  collected in a pre-survey

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Creating overlap

• Use of Structured Product Descriptions (SPD)
• Three draft group lists are merged into one
  European list
• Product descriptions are further harmonised and
  groups join each others items to obtain
  sufficient overlap

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Example
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Calculations of PPPs

• Done in one (EKS) calculation including all
  countries

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Item List Management Tool

• Web application to manage the establishment of
  item lists
• Collaboration and communication tool Eurostat,
  group leaders and countries exchange information
  and opinions inside the tool -gt full transparency
• Enforces the use of SPDs

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Ring comparison 2005 - major issues

• Ring pricing separated from regional pricing
• Difficulty in determining ring countries -gt needs
  to be representative of the regions
• Hence in 2011, ideally
• Ring products to be integrated in regional lists
• All countries price (some) ring products

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2 possible scenarios for 2011 round

• Start making global list on the basis of previous
  regional lists, then add regional products in
  each region
• Start making new draft regional lists, then merge
  them to create overlap (similar to Eurostat
  process)
• Use of SPDs for regional lists is imperative

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Challenges in either scenario

• Global list (ca. 500 items?) needs to be
  equi-representative for all regions -gt regions
  need to propose products and negotiate this list.
  Not all global items need to be on all regional
  lists.
• Regional lists (including global items) need to
  be representative for the regions.

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Calculation of linking factors

• Global PPP calculation not possible as long as
  regions use different calculation methods,
  because of fixity
• Inter-regional linking factors to be calculated
  from all countries prices for the global list
  items