Consumer Price Index in Grams of Silver (1469=1.0)

Explanatory Note:
 
Most of the prices of standard commodities presented here are gathered from the account books of the many pious foundations (vakif), both large and small, and their soup kitchens (imaret) operating in Istanbul. Some other prices are collected from the account books of the Topkapi Palace. All of these account books are available from the Ottoman archives in Istanbul. Based on the available evidence regarding the budget of an average urban consumer, the weight of food items in the overall consumer price index was fixed between 75 and 80 percent. The weight of each commodity in the overall index was then based on the shares of each in total expenditures of these institutions. To cite two prominent examples, in the absence of long series on bread prices, the weight of flour, mostly wheat flour, varies mostly between 32 and 40 percent of food expenditures and 24 to 32 percent of overall expenditures, depending on the fluctuations in prices. Similarly, the weight of meat (mutton) varies between 5 and 8 percent of the overall budget. It is likely that the diets of private households in the capital city differed from those offered by the soup kitchens. However, it is not possible to approximate the private diets more closely.
Below are the relative weights of commodities used most frequently in the food price index :

• 11 kiles of flour (for the measures, see below)
• 4 kiles of rice
• 9 okkas of animal based cooking oil
• 13 okkas of honey
• 40 okkas of mutton
• 0.2 kiles of chick peas (one kile of chick peas equalled 10 okkas)
• 5 okkas of olive oil.

One important reason why the weights of the individual commodities were kept constant over time was the unavailability of consumer budgets for different points in time. It is likely, however, that the changes in the commodity composition of the consumer budget were small in part because increases in average incomes were limited during these centuries. On the other hand, some substitution must have occurred over time in the consumer budgets from commodities whose prices rose faster towards those whose prices declined in relative terms. It is thus reasonable to expect that our fixed-weights index overstates the long-term price increases somewhat
The prices of non-food items obtained mostly the palace account books, were then added to the indices. For the period 1860 to 1914, data from the palace and vakif sources are very limited. For this reason, the detailed quarterly wholesale prices of the Commodity Exchange of Istanbul covering about two dozen commodities were used. Indices based on these prices were then linked to those covering the earlier period.
For further details regarding the sources of price and wage data and the construction of the indices, see S. Ozmucur and S. Pamuk, "Real Wages and the Standards of Living in the Ottoman Empire, 1469-1914", The Journal of Economic History (2002).

1. Okka is the standard measure of weight. 1 okka = 1,283 kilograms ; 1 cheki = 175-195 okka = 225-250 kilograms
2. Kile is a measure of volume. The kile of Istanbul which is used here is approximately 37 liters. In wheat and flour, one kile of Istanbul equals approximately 20 okkas. In rice, one kile of Istanbul and one kile of chick peas both equal 10 okkas.
3. Zira is a measure of length used for cloth. 1 zir'a = 67-76 cm.
4. The price series for cloth were not used in the calculation of the consumer price index.

Data first published at http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/istanbul.xls.