SUSU Students Learn to Calculate Inflation

Students of the Department of Finance, Supply, and Credit of the School of Economics and Management at South Ural State University have studied how much families living in South Urals spend to get their children ready for school. This is part of the project on studying the method of calculating and analysing the regional inflation, which is being fulfilled within the frameworks of the Collaboration Agreement signed between the Bank of Russian and the Ministry of Education and Science for the Chelyabinsk Region regarding the improvement of financial literacy.

At the first stage, the future economists formed a standard “school kit”, which included school uniform, sportswear, supplies, school bag and a bag for shoes. The students examined the prices for these goods in 16 Chelyabinsk stores of various price categories. From certain examples the future economists learned about a “personal” inflation when they looked into different compositions of “consumer goods baskets” of families with kids going to junior school, middle school, or high school.

The results of their work allowed the students to conclude that it is more expensive to get a junior school pupil ready for school than pupils of middle or high school. Moreover, girls’ clothes costs more than that for boys. Also, the future financial specialists came to a conclusion that online shops offer school goods at a cheaper price, but when you choose to buy clothes there, you need to take into account that what you have ordered my turn out to be wrong in size, colour, or quality. As a result, you might be late with getting a pupil ready for school. On the other hand ordering school supplies via the Internet is not that risky.

At the second stage, when it will become possible to make a dynamic comparison of prices (for instance, within the span of a month, or a year), the students will be directly calculating the inflation with consideration to the importance of each product as related to the whole “consumer goods basket”.

“Performing practical assignments closely related to everyday life will help better understand and solidly memorise the theoretical basics which students obtain in the university. Moreover, when the young specialists understand how inflation is calculated, and how “consumer goods basket” is formed, they assess “personal” inflation and form their inflation expectations with a better understanding,” comments the students’ work Deputy Manager of the Chelyabinsk Division of the Ural Head Office of the Bank of Russia Natalya Kuzmina.

Elena Kurkina
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