wholesale price index

wholesale price index

measure of changes in the prices charged by manufacturers and wholesalers. Wholesale price indexes measure the changes in commodity prices at a selected stage or stages before goods reach the retail level; the prices may be those charged by manufacturers to wholesalers or by wholesalers to retailers or by some combination of these and other distributors. In the United States, the index measures the price movements of all commodities flowing into primary markets of the United States-whether domestically produced or imported. Primary markets are those in which a good in a given stage of fabrication is first sold in substantial quantities. Because primary markets include goods of all degrees of fabrication, the same commodity is often priced at several stages of processing. Cotton, for example, is priced in the form of raw cotton, cotton yarn, cotton gray goods, cotton piece goods, and cotton clothing.

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