deflaattori

Deflaattori is a term used in Finnish statistics to denote a deflator, a price index used to remove the effect of inflation from nominal quantities and express them in real terms. The English equivalent is deflator, while the Italian equivalent is deflatore, and the plural in Finnish is deflaattorit. In macroeconomics, a deflator measures price changes across a broad set of goods and services and is used to convert nominal values into real values.

Typical examples include the gross domestic product (GDP) deflator, the implicit price deflator, the consumer price index (CPI) and the producer price index (PPI); though CPI and PPI are often treated as separate price indices with their own usage rules. The GDP deflator is the broadest, covering all domestically produced final goods and services, while the CPI focuses on consumer expenditures and uses a fixed basket of goods and services.

Calculation is conceptually simple: Real value equals Nominal value divided by the deflator, with the result usually scaled so that the base year deflator equals 100. Deflators can be fixed-base or chain-linked; chain-linked deflators update weights over time to reflect changing patterns of goods and services.

Usage and interpretation: Deflators are used to measure real growth, inflation-adjusted income, and price-level changes in national accounts, to compare across years, and to deflate financial time series. Data sources include national statistical offices (for example Statistics Finland and ISTAT), Eurostat, OECD, and BEA. Limitations include coverage differences, quality changes, and substitution biases that can affect the measured real values.