This page houses microdata on UK prices. To get started, select a consumer item using the drop-down box underneath the chart below.
The prices that underlie our official inflation measures behave in interesting, and very different, ways.
Microdata can be used to investigate inflationary puzzles and implications. I update the data monthly, my latest discussion note is here, and working paper is here. I have also put together an open-source GitHub repository with prices and inflation analysis. This is at https://rapidcharts.io/inflation.
The UK has great price data, with official CPI ‘micro data’ released with a lag of only one month, allowing work on prices, inflation and real wages to be conducted in (close to) real time. I have used this to create a long-run prices database (LRPD), which I make available here and update each month.
This is ongoing research, if you have any comments or would like to use the data, please get in touch. Here’s what happened to the prices of bitter in London between 1998 and 2020.
Using the data
Anyone is welcome to use the LRPD data. I update it monthly. Please contact me if you are using it so that I can ensure you have the latest files. A detailed user guide is here [under construction]. If you use the data and have comments on how to make it more useful, please let me know.
Examples: research papers and policy blogs
Some papers and policy blogs that use the data include:
- Hale, Sophie (2024). Decent exposure An overview of how Britain’s exposure to trade has changed. Resolution Foundation.
- Bakker, Datta, Davies, de Lyon (2023). Brexit and consumer food prices: May 2023 update.
- Bakker, Datta, Davies, de Lyon (2022). Non-tariff barriers and consumer prices: evidence from Brexit, CEP Discussion Paper.
- Watson, Jacob and Smith (2022). The rising cost of living and its effect on Londoners. Greater London Authority. Covered in the Evening Standard, and City AM.
- Bakker et al (2022). Imports, supply chains and consumer prices. Discussion paper, UK in a Changing Europe.
- Davies (2021). Prices in a pandemic. Discussion note. CEP. Covered in The Times (London), the Financial Times and the FT’s Alphaville blog.
- Davies (2021). Prices in the UK, a new dataset. Occasional Paper setting out the LRPD. CEP. (Data Annex here)
- Davies (2020). The changing cost of Christmas. An interactive piece, demonstrating the data. Economics Observatory.
Teaching
Some courses that have used the data either as a resource:
- LSE. The Economics for Python weekend designed and taught by Rahat Siddique. In the latest iteration of this, “Team BoE” put together some interesting new indices. You can get their presentation here, and Google Colab code (Python code, running in the browser) here.
- Imperial. The Data Stories course with Ralf Martin.
- Bristol. The Communicating Economics course run with Sarah Smith and Christian Spielmann. DropBox.
- UCL. The Data Skills Lab with Parama Chaudhury.
- Economics Observatory. Analysis of the UK’s ‘Tampon Tax’ by Sarah Smith, and related piece by Gemma Williams.
Examples: interactive charts
The chart below plots price changes observed in the underlying CPI microdata. It makes a simple point: inflation is a matter of price flux, and picks when we get more price rises and fewer price falls.
The chart is interactive. Try adjusting the slider to focus on a period you are interested in. The chart is coded in Vega Lite and the chart spec is available on GitHub. If you would like to learn how to make interactive visualisations take a look at our course.