Tampering with inflation data: A Benford law-based analysis of national statistics in Argentina

Maximilano Miranda-Zanetti, Fernando Delbianco () and Fernando Tohmé

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2019, vol. 525, issue C, 761-770

Abstract: There is a widespread consensus that the national statistics on inflation were manipulated by the Argentinean government from 2006 to 2015. The best known tool to run a forensic analysis of this claim is to check for the validity of Benford’s law in the data series. We find that indeed, the inflation for that period fails to satisfy this statistical regularity. We further compare this behavior to that of Argentina’s inflation series for the same period but recorded independently of the government; to that of the national records of 1943–2006, as well as to historical series of other countries. We find again that Argentina in 2006–2015 is the only one in our sample that can be singled out as candidate for statistical manipulation.

Keywords: Benford’s law; Data tampering; Inflation; Price series (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:525:y:2019:i:c:p:761-770

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2019.04.042

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