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

Autores
Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel; Delbianco, Fernando; Tohmé, Fernando Abel
Año de publicación
2018
Idioma
inglés
Tipo de recurso
documento de conferencia
Estado
versión publicada
Descripción
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
Materia
Ciencias Económicas
Benford’s Law
data tampering
inflation
price series
Nivel de accesibilidad
acceso abierto
Condiciones de uso
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Repositorio
SEDICI (UNLP)
Institución
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
OAI Identificador
oai:sedici.unlp.edu.ar:10915/169128
Acceder
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network_name_str SEDICI (UNLP)
spelling On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation StatisticsMiranda Zanetti, Maximiliano GabrielDelbianco, FernandoTohmé, Fernando AbelCiencias EconómicasBenford’s Lawdata tamperinginflationprice seriesBenford’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 Económicas2018-11info:eu-repo/semantics/conferenceObjectinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionObjeto de conferenciahttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_5794info:ar-repo/semantics/documentoDeConferenciaapplication/pdfhttp://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/169128enginfo:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/isbn/978-987-28590-6-0info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/url/https://bd.aaep.org.ar/anales/works/works2018/miranda.pdfinfo:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/issn/1852-0022info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)reponame:SEDICI (UNLP)instname:Universidad Nacional de La Platainstacron:UNLP2025-10-15T11:35:17Zoai:sedici.unlp.edu.ar:10915/169128Institucionalhttp://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/Universidad públicaNo correspondehttp://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/oai/snrdalira@sedici.unlp.edu.arArgentinaNo correspondeNo correspondeNo correspondeopendoar:13292025-10-15 11:35:17.606SEDICI (UNLP) - Universidad Nacional de La Platafalse
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics
title On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics
spellingShingle On the Possibility of Using Benford´s Law to Analyze Manipulation of Inflation Statistics
Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel
Ciencias Económicas
Benford’s Law
data tampering
inflation
price series
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
dc.creator.none.fl_str_mv Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel
Delbianco, Fernando
Tohmé, Fernando Abel
author Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel
author_facet Miranda Zanetti, Maximiliano Gabriel
Delbianco, Fernando
Tohmé, Fernando Abel
author_role author
author2 Delbianco, Fernando
Tohmé, Fernando Abel
author2_role author
author
dc.subject.none.fl_str_mv Ciencias Económicas
Benford’s Law
data tampering
inflation
price series
topic Ciencias Económicas
Benford’s Law
data tampering
inflation
price series
dc.description.none.fl_txt_mv 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
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.
publishDate 2018
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv 2018-11
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info:ar-repo/semantics/documentoDeConferencia
format conferenceObject
status_str publishedVersion
dc.identifier.none.fl_str_mv http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/169128
url http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/169128
dc.language.none.fl_str_mv eng
language eng
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info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/issn/1852-0022
dc.rights.none.fl_str_mv info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
eu_rights_str_mv openAccess
rights_invalid_str_mv http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
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