prijsdata

Prijsdata refers to time-stamped observations of prices for goods and services across markets. A prijsdata set typically includes fields such as product or service identifier, location, date, price, and sometimes quantity or unit. The data can cover a single market or be aggregated over regions and time periods.

In practice prijsdata originates from various sources: official statistics offices (in the Netherlands, CBS; at EU level Eurostat), market data vendors, exchanges, and retail scanners. Consumer price data used for inflation measures often come from household or product-level surveys and scanner data. Financial price data captures securities, commodities, and currencies, with intraday or end-of-day values. Data can be price quotes, transaction prices, or averages over a defined set of observations.

Uses of prijsdata include the construction of price indices such as the consumer price index (CPI) and the harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP), inflation targeting, economic research, policy analysis, and business decisions. Price data also supports pricing strategy, risk management, and forecasting in both macroeconomic and sectoral contexts.

Construction and quality aspects involve cleaning, validation, and time-alignment of observations; revisions may occur as new information becomes available. Indices aggregate across products and regions, and may apply seasonal and quality adjustments. Licensing varies widely; some data are open (for example, Eurostat OpenData), while others are proprietary and require licensing.

Formats and access typically include CSV, JSON, and XML, with access via APIs or data portals. Prominent producers include national statistical offices, Eurostat, and financial data providers. Challenges include balancing timeliness and accuracy, handling revisions, sampling bias, regional heterogeneity, and data gaps. Proper interpretation requires attention to base periods, units, and aggregation rules.