Frequently Asked Questions International Price Indexes 1. Together with the Consumer Price Indexes and Producer Price Indexes, the International Price Program is considered one of the BLS's three major price programs. Each has been designated as a leading Federal economic indicator. The three price programs are designed to cover all aspects of the U.S. economy.
Exports are goods that change hands from a person residing in the U.S. to a person residing abroad.
Imports are goods that change hands from to a person residing abroad to a person residing in the United States. The import and export price indexes are derived using a sample of the overall items that are traded. Approximately 6,000 respondents provide the International Price Program with prices for around 20,000 items each month. The primary use for the International Price Program's import and export price indexes is to deflate various foreign trade and growth statistics produced by the U.S. government . Other uses include measuring inflation, as an input to fiscal and monetary policy, forecasting future prices, performing elasticity studies, deriving terms of trade indexes, analyzing exchange rates, negotiating trade contracts, and analyzing import prices by locality of origin.