Home page - 19-th meeting of the Ottawa Group

The Ottawa Group on Price Indices is a city group established by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 1994. It provides an international forum for experts in national statistical offices, international organizations and research institutions to discuss conceptual, methodological and practical issues related to price indices. An interesting article on the history of the Ottawa Group and its contributions to CPI methodology is available in English on the “OpenEdition Journals” website.

The Group is concerned mainly with the consumer price index (CPI) but also discusses other price indices and issues that are relevant to price statistics in general. The objective of the Group is to support the development and implementation of sound methods and best practices in national statistical offices for the compilation of price indices. Without avoiding theoretical aspects, the focus of the Group is on applied research and the development of best practices.

The Ottawa Group meets every second year. The meetings are attended by price index experts from national statistical offices, international organisations and research institutions. The most visible output of the Ottawa Group are the papers (available for download on the group’s official website) presented and discussed at the meetings (links are available on the group’s official website).

The 19th meeting will be hosted by Statistics Poland, National Bank of Poland (the central bank) and SGH Warsaw School of Economics from Wednesday to Friday, May 13–15, 2026.

The topics for discussion at the meeting include, but are not limited to, the following:

• new data sources to compile price indices (scanner/web-scraped data; administrative data sources; product churn and shrinkflation; quality adjustment);
• compiling property price indices (residential and commercial);
• the measurement of services;
• other challenging areas of price measurement;
• conceptual frameworks (index number formulae; multi-purpose price statistics);
• treatment of special cases (strongly seasonal products; zero prices).

The language of the 2026 meeting will be English, as was the case at previous meetings.

The meeting will be held in Warsaw. Presenters and speakers are expected to attend the meeting in person. However, participants will be able to observe the meeting virtually and submit questions via the meeting chat.

We invite professionals and scientist interested in price statistics to register online between 19 January and 20 February 2026.

Active participation and lively discussion are key strengths of the Ottawa Group, so we encourage the presentation of a paper, or papers, at the meeting. Papers could also be considered for a poster session that will take place during the meeting.

The topics of presentations and abstracts (no more than 400 words) should be submitted online on the website during speakers registration (they can be completed or edited later after logging in). Papers and multimedia presentations should be submitted by 17 April 2026. Alternatively all documents can be send by email to: ottawagroup2026@stat.gov.pl