Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure that examines the average change in prices paid by consumers for goods and services over time. It is a measure of inflation.

By default, data comes from the Global Macro Database (GMDB), which is annual-only (base year 2010). Set oecd_source=True to instead retrieve monthly or quarterly data from the OECD (base year varies per country), useful for tracking inflation more closely in real time.

Data comes from the Global Macro Database (GMDB), further information about the variable can be found within https://www.globalmacrodata.com/documentation.html

Also known as: CPI, cost of living index.

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Calculate the Consumer Price Index in Python

The Consumer Price Index is available in the Economics module of the open-source Finance Toolkit. Install it with:

pip install financetoolkit -U

Then call get_consumer_price_index as shown below.

from financetoolkit import Economics

economics = Economics(start_date='2008-09-01', end_date='2020-03-01')

economics.get_consumer_price_index(countries=['Germany', 'France', 'Portugal'])

Which returns:

  Germany France Portugal
2008 98.6508 98.1924 99.527
2009 98.8937 98.2913 98.628
2010 100 100 100
2011 102.482 102.287 103.555
2012 104.695 104.553 106.43
2013 106.377 105.589 106.897
2014 107.196 106.236 106.727
2015 107.924 106.328 107.269
2016 108.32 106.653 107.951
2017 110.164 107.896 109.631
2018 112.296 110.162 110.91
2019 113.815 111.591 111.243
2020 114.239 112.18 111.108

Parameters

get_consumer_price_index accepts the following parameters:

  • countries (list[str] | str | None, optional): The countries to include in the data. Defaults to None.
  • period (str | None, optional): Whether to return the monthly, quarterly or the annual data. Only used when oecd_source=True; the GMDB source is always annual. Defaults to None.
  • oecd_source (bool, optional): Whether to get the data from the OECD instead of the Global Macro Database (GMDB). Defaults to False.
  • rolling (int, optional): The rolling window size to use for smoothing the data (simple moving average). Defaults to None.
  • trailing (int, optional): The trailing window size to use for summing the data over trailing periods (e.g. a trailing-4-quarter sum). Defaults to None.
  • growth (bool, optional): Whether to return the growth data or the actual data.
  • lag (int, optional): The number of periods to lag the data by.
  • standardize (bool, optional): Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False.
  • rounding (int | None, optional): The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to None.
Inflation Rate Consumer Confidence Index Business Confidence Index Composite Leading Indicator House Prices Rent Prices Share Prices Exchange Rates Producer Price Index Real Effective Exchange Rate Household Savings Rate Household Debt to Income Ratio

The Economics module page introduces the module, and the sidebar lists all of its functions.

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