Measuring Inflation and Growth Using Spanning Trees
证明大多数通胀与增长测量方法背后都有一个生成树结构，并利用Kruskal最小生成树算法找出对指数公式选择最不敏感的估计方法。对美国、英国和澳大利亚数据的应用表明，链式法是连接年度数据的最佳方式，而季度数据的最优连接方法取决于季节性程度。
It is shown how most methods of measuring inflation and growth have an underlying spanning tree. The spanning tree whose resulting inflation (growth) estimates are least sensitive to the choice of index number formula can be computed using Kruskal's minimum spanning tree algorithm. Applying this algorithm to American, British, and Australian data sets, chaining is shown to be the best possible way of linking annual data. For quarterly data, the optimal method of linking depends on the amount of seasonality in the data.