The Thirty-eighth Session of the Advisory Committee on Post Adjustment Questions
Paris, 15 to 22 February 2016
At this session, the Committee reviewed methodological issues pertaining to the 2016 round of cost-of-living surveys, scheduled to be launched, with the price survey in New York, in June 2016. The core areas of discussion and recommendations by the Committee included (a) the review of the list of goods and services in the market basket used for ICSC’s price surveys, (b) a redesigned staff expenditures survey questionnaire and other data collection forms, (c) procedures for determining the new set of common expenditure weights used in post adjustment index calculations, (d) procedures and operational guidelines for data collection and (e) the schedule of the baseline surveys to be conducted at headquarters duty stations in the autumn of 2016. The Committee also reviewed the possible impact of the new set of weights assigned to the US dollarized consumer price indices of the 26 countries used for calculating the out-of-area index; as well as the efficacy of the system of bands used to determine the weight applicable to the out-of-area component (which is already approved by the Commission), relative to a set of plausible alternative systems of bands.
The session was attended by representatives of many organizations and all staff federations, as well as several observers representing Eurostat and the International Service for Remunerations and Pensions, partner agencies of the ICSC, in the exchange of statistical information and methodology.
