Construction of analytical indices of consumer demand

Indices of consumer demand are important indicators of the reflection of socio-economic dynamics. Their purpose is to reflect, in an aggregated form, the trends in the economic performance of the complex market system, primarily the prices and quantities of production and consumption of products and services called goods. There are several approaches to the construction of economic indices, in particular, the indices of consumer demand, which are the main object of our article. Until now, statistical services use the binary statistical (formula) indices of changes in quantities and consumption prices to assess the socioeconomic situation. It is possible to say that the formula-statistical direction of indexology is heuristic and not objective, since it reflects the arguments of the authors of different formulas, but ignores the rationality of consumer behavior. For a meaningful and objective characterization of socio-economic dynamics, one should take into account not only the change in prices and income, but also the substitution effects generated by the preferences of consumers. Currently, economic indices are also called analytical ones. These indices, unlike numerous formula indices, take into account consumer preferences and satisfy almost all Fisher tests, formulated by the outstanding statistician Irving Fisher in 1911 as a system of requirements for "correct" indices. This direction has not received practical application because of the absence in the modern economic theory - the theory of market demand.