Template talk:Inflation

Suggestion: Use a more up-to-date inflation metric

The United States has two common inflation metrics: the CPI and the PCEPI (Personal Consumption Expenditure PI). The CPI and its variants are designed for cost-of-living adjustments to wages in negotiated contracts. As a result, the CPI excludes many common goods (such as health insurance) provided as fringe benefits rather than being paid for out-of-pocket. The PCEPI gives a more complete picture by including all consumption goods and services. The CPI is also methodologically awkward in that it uses a right-chained basket (right-hand sum) to approximate inflation, which is strictly less accurate than the PCEPI's use of the trapezoid rule. (The bad approximation has stuck with us for what are essentially political reasons.)

The PCEPI is the metric recommended by the Federal Reserve, and the metric it pays attention to when it decides monetary policy; as a result, I suggest replacing CPI with PCEPI in this template. Does this sound reasonable? –Sincerely, A Lime 18:25, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

A Lime, yes, though I would perhaps suggest adding another template rather than replacing the current one, for two reasons. Firstly, I assume CPI data goes back further and might be necessary for obtaining data from certain years, secondly there may be cases where one methodology is more appropriate than the other. Zoozaz1 (talk) 21:12, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I know the PCEPI has been reconstructed going back to at least 1929, which is roughly the same point as where CPI figures become reliable enough to be usable. –Sincerely, A Lime 21:50, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Millions > Billions

My question is similar to the one above, but on a much larger scale (I'm converting Rockefeller money). What I currently have is: $475 million (equivalent to ${{inflation|US|475|1922|r=-2|fmt=c}} million in {{inflation/year|US}}) which results in $475 million (equivalent to $8,600 million in 2023). What I would prefer, however, would be $475 million (equivalent to $8.6 billion in 2023). Is there any way to turn that 8,600 into 8.6, or is that not possible with the template? Thanks either way, DrOrinScrivello (talk) 18:11, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

@DrOrinScrivello: $475 million (equivalent to ${{formatprice|{{inflation|US|475000000|1922}}}} in {{inflation/year|US}}) gives you: $475 million (equivalent to $8.65 billion in 2023). I'd note that you probably should be using US-GDP instead though, which is based on GDP deflator indices instead of the CPI. Imzadi 1979 → 04:11, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh, you mean I should have read the bold text at the very top of the template documentation? Novel idea, that.

Seriously though, thanks, Imzadi1979, for both tips. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 14:12, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Stock prices

I've seen a few cases where inflation was used to describe historical stock prices; for example, a company had an initial public offering at $13.72 per share in July 2007, or about $19.00 in 2023. Because this template uses the consumer price index, and shares of stock are not consumer goods, I typically remove these adjustments. Is this generally good practice? If so, could you please add stock prices as an example of situations in which not to use this template? White 720 (talk) 15:05, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

I think removing these adjustments is incorrect. The adjustment is meant to show how much of a person's purchasing power it would cost to purchase one share of stock at a given time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:46, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Jonesey, with a caveat, but it depends on the context. Inflation adjustment in the example you give serves no purpose, so removing the adjustment is not really a problem in this case; however, if the current share price had also been given, then the inflation adjustment would have given the reader a comparative measure of how well the stock has performed. Inflation adjustment for the sake of just having a modern value is not useful unless it forms the basis of a comparison. Betty Logan (talk) 21:27, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 30 June 2024

Please change the year for BD to 2023. I updated the CPI value. Mehedi Abedin 03:13, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:15, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 30 June 2024 (2)

Change the BD value to
| BD = {{#tag:ref|[https://www.ceicdata.com/en/bangladesh/consumer-and-producer-price-index-annual/bd-consumer-price-index Bangladesh BD: Consumer Price Index Economic Indicators CEIC{{dubious|date=June 2024}} |name = "inflation-BD" |group={{{group|}}}}}
The previous link isn’t updating the CPI value for Bangladesh anymore. Mehedi Abedin 03:18, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:15, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

pre-World War I German mark

In Lise Meitner I have some sums in pre-World War I German marks. Is there a way to convert them to present-day Euros? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:09, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

I believe the {{Inflation}} template automatically converts to euros from 2003 onward:

• DM {{format price|{{Inflation|DE|100|1900|2002}}|0}} = DM 1,053
• €{{format price|{{Inflation|DE|100|1900|2003}}|0}} = €546

Betty Logan (talk) 06:38, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 15 July 2024

UK-GDP

• Please update the bolded dates: United Kingdom Gross Domestic Product deflator figures follow the MeasuringWorth "consistent series" supplied in Thomas, Ryland; Williamson, Samuel H. (2018). "What Was the U.K. GDP Then?". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved February 2, 2020. on Template:Inflation/fn.
  • 2018 should become 2024.
  • February 2, 2020 should become July 15, 2024.
• Please update the date in Template:Inflation-year to 2023.

That way, I can update the actual values and clean up the non-protected pages.

Thanks! Snowman304|talk 08:25, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

 Done Izno (talk) 22:14, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Snowman304|talk 05:54, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

This change may be related to template errors that are happening, please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Inflation template broken. hinnk (talk) 22:43, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

thousands separator character

other templates have an option to choose gaps as thousands separator, how is it expected to work with this template? ThurnerRupert (talk) 04:09, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Wrap it with {{val}}? {{val|{{Inflation|US|59005|1982}}}} → 186293 – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:46, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Lua version of Template:Inflation/year

2 years ago, I created a Lua version of Template:Inflation/year at Template:Inflation/year/sandbox that uses Module:Inflation to automatically determine the end year of the data so that the template won't need to be updated manually. There were no objections to implementing it when it was discussed at Template_talk:Inflation/Archive_3#c-Ahecht-20220718174100-New_sandbox_version, but for whatever reason I never actually did so. Since so much time has passed, I thought I'd ask again here before copying it over. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:14, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done. Let me know if this broke anything that I didn't catch already. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:50, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it's broken. I used it on James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan and it returns "The time allocated for running scripts has expired". AntientNestor (talk) 20:22, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I have reverted this edit per multiple reports at WP:VPT today. Izno (talk) 21:32, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

@AntientNestor, Izno You must've been reverting at the exact same time I was attempting to, as I didn't even get an edit conflict notice after hitting undo. I'll investigate the performance issues further. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:34, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt response. It looks ok again. AntientNestor (talk) 21:44, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

@AntientNestor, Izno: Turns out mw.text.split() is incredibly slow. Replacing it with a home-grown splitting function made it 20x faster. I've tested it on that James Brudenell page, and the CPU times are now virtually identical between the new and old versions. I'll go ahead and re-implement. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 00:05, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

mw.text is probably Unicode sensitive, and I'd guess using lua string is not. Don't know how pertinent that is. Izno (talk) 01:36, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@Izno Might be a portability issue on other wikis, but since we're just dealing with numbers and basic mathematical operators there's no reason that any of the data templates should be using non-ASCII characters on enwiki. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:38, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Working as before now, thanks. Apologies for diverting your attention from the project-wide issue. AntientNestor (talk) 07:34, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm giving up on this for now. Even my more efficient implementation is too slow on List of highest-grossing films in the United States and Canada, which takes the use of this template to the extreme. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:43, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Template change for Template:Australian_dollar

Please refer to this link: Template_talk:Inflation/AU

Text pasted below for convenience:

Question for you on your recent edit, since I'm not familiar with the inflation template: does the formula account for the fact that 1 pound became $2 upon decimalisation? Aspirex (talk) 12:11, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply][reply]

You know what, that is an excellent question! I do recall seeing a vintage video piece about that prior to dollarisation. I assumed it was factored in, because why would I question such a popular Wiki template!

But Wow! Just checked. That is unbelievable! The calculation of £500 in 1940 money says it is $23,813, but I cross-referenced it with the RBA inflation calculator, which specifically addresses the $2:£1 exchange rate. Plugging in the same numbers, I got $47,627.04, which lines up almost perfectly as double the amount!! I think we've found a critical flaw in the conversion process. Man, this is a massive discovery! I'm going to notify people at once and get this looked at. What an incredible discovery. Damn! Electricmaster (talk) 12:22, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Credit to Aspirex for bringing this to my attention. Can we please get some people experienced with the inflation template to address our concerns and fix the conversion (which seems like it needs to be done ASAP). Electricmaster (talk) 13:29, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

This is a known issue with many templates, as the note at the currency conversion section in the documentation specifies (and as is mentioned in the Australia dataset addendum). As of now the best practice would simply be to do the conversion in the article for templates that don't include redenominations. For convenience I've adjusted the template to adjust for the redenomination. Zoozaz1 (talk) 13:48, 25 September 2024 (UTC)