E-Commerce Gets Its Own Consumer Price Index

Adobe launches a new service to track inflation and deflation, in near real time, for certain online purchases.

Inflation can be a troublesome phenomenon, even when the rate is low. That 2% raise you got this year? If the inflation rate is 2.1%, as it was in 2012, you just lost money. While inflation has been quite low lately—just 1.4% in January—individual sectors see big swings up and down. The U.S. government's consumer price index (CPI) measures these economic oscillations by surveying what Americans in urban areas pay for staple products like food, clothing, and medical care.

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