the harmonised index of consumer prices, or hicp, remains the appropriate price measure. however, it did recommend that an extended hicp should be computed over time, to account for owner - occupied housing ( ooh ). let me emphasise the phrase ‘ over time ’. some time will actually be required to construct such a harmonised index. as this audience knows very well, the issue of incorporating ooh into the hicp ( yes, we speak in acronyms here, as in many other fields ) is not straightforward. it is indeed, in principle, desirable for representativeness and cross - country comparability, but at the same time it faces non - trivial implementation challenges. currently, there is considerable crosscountry heterogeneity in the way ( if any ) ooh is included in national inflation indices, and all approaches have their pros and cons. more analysis and exchange of views on this topic is crucial, and this workshop offers a good opportunity for discussion about it. 2 moreover, the implementation of any new price index incorporating ooh needs to be well managed. in particular, information should be communicated carefully as the existing hicp would continue to serve as the main reference for monetary policy purposes. integrating ooh into the consumer price index is not the only challenge for price statisticians beyond the pandemic. several other key issues are linked to technological and market developments, such as the explosion of e - commerce, the increasing numbers the rental equivalence approach matches up the characteristics of the owner - occupied housing stock with equivalent rental properties and calculates what it would cost, at current rental prices, to rent the whole stock of owner - occupied housing. the net acquisitions approach measures the costs associated with the household sector acquiring new residential housing. implementations of this approach typically include all money spent on the net acquisitions of dwellings by the household sector including self - builds, spending on major renovations and repairs and the various service costs associated with acquiring new homes. of product varieties and the faster pace of product and outlet replacement. specifically, the eternal issue of how to account for quality changes is being exacerbated by the increased speed of innovation. on the other hand, i see the growth in e - commerce as an opportunity, as well as a challenge, for price statisticians. we must find innovative ways to collect price data on innovative trade channels, and this is indeed a problem. but the solution ( s ), if smart and creative enough,

a point estimate, as in the european commission survey. we find that households provide values that are in line with official releases. 7 concerning firms, in our quarterly survey of inflation and growth expectations we ask companies to provide point estimates for both nationwide hicp inflation at different horizons, and own selling price changes. we see this survey as particularly valuable because quantitative price expectation surveys for businesses are scarce — a surprising fact, given that firms ultimately set the prices of goods and play a key role in wage setting, either through their associations ( collective bargaining ), or on an individual basis. 8 concerning property price developments, our housing market survey, conducted quarterly on a large sample of real estate agents, enables us to monitor current and expected house prices, as well as rents, and more generally to follow the main trends of the housing market. 9 we also devote considerable research efforts to using price expectations data. topics include how inflation expectations form, to what extent they are anchored, how inflation expectations influence agents ’ decisions ( including pricing decisions ), and how best to derive estimates of agents ’ inflation expectations from market data. 10 in 2018, the eurosystem set up the price - setting microdata analysis network ( prisma ), with a view to improving our understanding of price - setting behaviour, and gaining new insights into a key element of monetary policy transmission. prisma exploits various sets of granular data, including those underlying official price indices such as the consumer price index, as well as scanner data and online prices. microdata on prices are useful for studying the price - setting process, such as frequency, size and distribution of monthly price changes, a line of research that would not be possible using aggregate indices only. a recent, interesting example of what one can do with such data is a banca d ’ italia paper that singles out those individual prices that change only infrequently. almost by definition, such prices generally have a lot of inertia, and in fact they had barely changed for years. however, with the recent surge in inflation they are now displaying a distinct, if still moderate, upward trend. ( other prices are much more volatile, and it is more difficult to extract obvious signals from them ). 11 another paper based on the prisma dataset, on quality adjustment, will be presented in this meeting. 12 let me emphasise in closing that i am mentioning this network, not only because of the interesting topics it has been addressing, but also because it is