Panel Balancing¶
Most index formulas require a balanced panel: every product must be present in every period. This tab turns the aggregated panel into a complete one and optionally fills remaining gaps.
Remove unbalanced products¶
Click Remove Unbalanced Products to keep only those products that appear in all periods. Products with any missing period are dropped entirely.
The info line reports the change, e.g.:
Why balancing matters
Bilateral and multilateral index functions compare price relatives or expenditure shares across periods and products. A product missing in one period breaks those pairwise comparisons, so the panel must be complete before Index Calculation.
Imputation¶
If you prefer to keep products rather than drop them, you can fill gaps with imputation. Imputation works on the aggregated_price (and aggregated_quantity, if present) columns.
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Carry Forward | Fills a missing value with the most recent prior value. |
| Carry Backward | Fills a missing value with the next available value. |
- Run Remove Unbalanced Products first (this establishes the complete period structure).
- Select an imputation method from the dropdown.
- Click Apply Imputation.
Order of operations
Imputation is applied after removing unbalanced products. The info line updates to record which method was applied.
Once the panel is complete, proceed to Index Calculation.