Consumer Price Indices: Bridging Post-liberation, Communism, and Post-communism in Bulgaria

This study examines price developments in Bulgaria from 1887 to 2023. We split the period into three sub-periods, post-liberation, communism, and post-communism, to reflect major changes in price collection and aggregation practices. For each of these, we review existing sources, considering the evolution of price collection and the index methodology. We aggregate the various available indices of consumer prices into a composite index. To overcome the difficulties arising from the different bases and index compilation methodologies, we switch to chain-based indices. The index we construct bridges the first two sub-periods with the modern consumer price index, whose compilation began in 1991. It reflects historical events and economic dynamics and provides a reliable foundation for long-term price comparisons. It serves as an important ingredient in the study of many other macroeconomic aggregates for Bulgaria, such as real prices, wages, and wealth, for almost 140 years.