Regional Price Levels in the Czech Republic – Past and Current Perspectives

Abstract

Regional price levels represent research topic that is currently under spotlight. Officially published data are focused on national price levels forming only one of the most important inputs for international comparison. Despite this, the national price levels are used to estimate regional indicators in Purchase Power Standard (PPS). Team of researchers from the University of Economics in Prague was dealing with the issue and estimated regional price levels for NUTS 3 regions in the Czech Republic for the year 2007. This estimate should be updated nevertheless the previously applied methodology cannot be used directly under current conditions but has to be adjusted because in the meantime several changes took place. The aim of the paper is to prepare a methodological background for further computations of renewed regional price levels in the Czech Republic and to introduce the main changes that have occurred since the previous results for the year 2007 were estimated. Impacts of these changes on the results are discussed as well.

Keywords

• Regional price levels
• methodological issues
• Czech NUTS 3 regions
• comparison and update