Page 55 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.81, # 1, 2024, pp. 51-64

DATA AND METHODOLOGY
Data
I employ monthly data spanning from March 2004 to June 2023. The variables used
in this study are aggregate producer price index, manufacturing producer price index,
food producer price index, agricultural producer price index, aggregate consumer
price index, food consumer price index as well as non-food consumer price index.

All series have been collected from the bulletins of the State Statistical Committee of
the Republic of Azerbaijan (SSCRA). I transform the series into year-on-year growth
rates and in this way, the seasonality concern is addressed. Descriptive statistics is
summarized in Table 1. All of the variables possess positive mean and median, where
non-food inflation represents lowest mean and median values. Standard deviations
suggest that the highest volatile variable is aggregate PPI, while non-food CPI is the
lowest volatile variable.

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics (Annual change)

Variables Mean Median Max Min Std. Skewness Kurtosis
Dev.
Aggregate CPI 7.32 5.04 25.38 -2.00 6.16 0.79 2.87
Food CPI 9.32 7.51 37.46 -6.33 8.47 0.72 3.43
Non-Food CPI 5.35 3.42 21.75 -1.40 5.00 1.06 3.10
Aggregate PPI 16.60 10.58 172.63 -63.12 37.15 1.34 5.46
Manufacturing 10.21 7.69 41.69 -16.86 11.76 0.28 2.56
PPI
Agricultural
PPI 6.10 6.37 26.47 -11.08 7.11 0.01 2.68
Food PPI 9.20 5.58 62.11 -18.19 13.21 0.99 4.40

Background information on price indices in Azerbaijan
The statistics on price indices are published on a monthly basis. According to the
2
SSCRA , as of 2023, there are 528 goods and services in the consumer basket of
Azerbaijan. The composition of the basket and the number of products change from
time to time and the weights are determined in accordance with the household budget
survey. The basket is mainly divided into three main components, namely, food, non-
food, and services components. Price monitoring encompasses the whole country and
price movements of food products are registered three times a month, while collection
of price information of non-food products and paid services are carried out once a
month.

2 https://stat.gov.az/source/price_tarif/?lang=en

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