On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics

Benford’s law is a well-known regularity in the frequency distribution of first (or most significant) digits found in many data sets. This regularity has been employed in the past to perform forensic analysis of data, including macroeconomic series. In this paper, we propound the usage of the regul...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel, Delbianco, Fernando, Tohmé, Fernando Abel
Formato: Objeto de conferencia
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: 2018
Materias:
Ciencias Económicas
Benford’s Law
data tampering
inflation
price series
Acceso en línea:http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/169128
Aporte de:
SEDICI (UNLP) de Universidad Nacional de La Plata
id I19-R120-10915-169128
record_format dspace
spelling I19-R120-10915-1691282024-09-02T20:02:00Z http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/169128 On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel Delbianco, Fernando Tohmé, Fernando Abel 2018-11 2018 2024-08-27T14:08:00Z en Ciencias Económicas Benford’s Law data tampering inflation price series Benford’s law is a well-known regularity in the frequency distribution of first (or most significant) digits found in many data sets. This regularity has been employed in the past to perform forensic analysis of data, including macroeconomic series. In this paper, we propound the usage of the regularity to study possible manipulations of price and inflation index series. To this end, we evaluate fulfillment of the regularity in macroeconomic series of price and inflation for some representative countries. We resort to simulations to study the relationship between price and inflation indexes regarding compliance of Benford’s law, possible problems of analyzing the regularity using price indexes (mainly, due to splicing of series, and base-year re-scaling), and how the regularity could be lost in the inflation series when some simple manipulations are performed over inflation data. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas Objeto de conferencia Objeto de conferencia http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) application/pdf
institution Universidad Nacional de La Plata
institution_str I-19
repository_str R-120
collection SEDICI (UNLP)
language Inglés
topic Ciencias Económicas
Benford’s Law
data tampering
inflation
price series
spellingShingle Ciencias Económicas
Benford’s Law
data tampering
inflation
price series
Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel
Delbianco, Fernando
Tohmé, Fernando Abel
On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics
topic_facet Ciencias Económicas
Benford’s Law
data tampering
inflation
price series
description Benford’s law is a well-known regularity in the frequency distribution of first (or most significant) digits found in many data sets. This regularity has been employed in the past to perform forensic analysis of data, including macroeconomic series. In this paper, we propound the usage of the regularity to study possible manipulations of price and inflation index series. To this end, we evaluate fulfillment of the regularity in macroeconomic series of price and inflation for some representative countries. We resort to simulations to study the relationship between price and inflation indexes regarding compliance of Benford’s law, possible problems of analyzing the regularity using price indexes (mainly, due to splicing of series, and base-year re-scaling), and how the regularity could be lost in the inflation series when some simple manipulations are performed over inflation data.
format Objeto de conferencia
Objeto de conferencia
author Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel
Delbianco, Fernando
Tohmé, Fernando Abel
author_facet Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel
Delbianco, Fernando
Tohmé, Fernando Abel
author_sort Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel
title On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics
title_short On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics
title_full On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics
title_fullStr On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics
title_full_unstemmed On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics
title_sort on the possibility of using benford´s law to analyze manipulation of inflation statistics
publishDate 2018
url http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/169128
work_keys_str_mv AT mirandazanettimaximilianogabriel onthepossibilityofusingbenfordslawtoanalyzemanipulationofinflationstatistics
AT delbiancofernando onthepossibilityofusingbenfordslawtoanalyzemanipulationofinflationstatistics
AT tohmefernandoabel onthepossibilityofusingbenfordslawtoanalyzemanipulationofinflationstatistics
_version_ 1809234750223679488

Ejemplares similares