UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) training · Asia-Pacific · United Nations ESCAP - SIAP
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersUN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) training is a professional certification run by United Nations ESCAP - SIAP, for candidates in Asia-Pacific. Courses and e-learning for national statistical office staff; certificates on completion.
Official site: unsiap.or.jp.
We have not been able to confirm these details against the exam body's own specification, so fees, dates and pass marks are left out on purpose. Check the current format, eligibility, fees and dates on the official site.
The measures national statisticians compile: index-number theory and tests, wholesale and consumer price indices, agricultural production and parity indices, terms of trade, and national accounts with agriculture's gross value added. Business-statistics treatments of index numbers are in the Agribusiness track; this goes to compilation level.
Our 17 UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific training questions in this subject: 2 easy, 9 medium, 6 hard, across 9 units.
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
These 10 were written to UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific training and are not shown on any other exam's page.
Why does a Laspeyres consumer price index tend to overstate the change in the cost of living?
A. It ignores substitution towards goods whose relative prices fall
A fixed base basket assumes buyers keep the same quantities; in reality they substitute towards relatively cheaper goods, so the fixed basket costs more than the cheapest basket giving the same utility (substitution bias). Using current quantities would be Paasche, which understates.
Which index satisfies the circular test?
A. The simple geometric mean of price relatives
The geometric mean of relatives is transitive: GM(p1/p0) x GM(p2/p1) = GM(p2/p0). Fixed-weight aggregative indices also pass. Fisher, Laspeyres and Paasche change weights with the comparison and fail circularity.
The Carli elementary index (arithmetic mean of price relatives) is avoided in many CPIs mainly because it
C. Fails time reversal and has an upward bias
The arithmetic mean of relatives forward and the arithmetic mean of reverse relatives multiply to more than one, so Carli drifts upwards, especially when chained. The unit-test failure belongs to Dutot with heterogeneous items; Carli needs no quantities.
Two items both cost 10 in period 0. In period 1 one costs 15 and the other 5; in period 2 both cost 10 again. What is the chained Carli index for period 2 (period 0 = 100)?
C. 133.33
Link 1 = (1.5 + 0.5)/2 = 1.00; link 2 = (10/15 + 10/5)/2 = (0.6667 + 2)/2 = 1.3333. Chained = 133.33, although prices are back where they started: this is chain drift. A chained Jevons index would give exactly 100.00 here, since sqrt(1.5 x 0.5) x sqrt(0.667 x 2) = 1.
Why does the international CPI manual favour the Jevons formula for elementary aggregates?
C. It passes time reversal and allows for some substitution
Jevons, the geometric mean of relatives, is time-reversible and transitive and is consistent with some substitution within the aggregate. Weighting by price level describes Dutot, and Jevons is never above Carli.
FAO's agricultural production indices value each commodity at which prices to aggregate across commodities and countries?
B. International commodity prices of a base period
Using the same international base-period prices for all countries puts commodities into a common unit and makes country indices comparable. National prices would differ between countries.
The System of National Accounts 2008 was issued jointly by which organisations?
C. UN, IMF, World Bank, OECD and European Commission
The SNA is the joint international standard of the United Nations, IMF, World Bank, OECD and European Commission (Eurostat); the 2025 update was adopted by the UN Statistical Commission.
Under the SNA, crops grown and consumed by the farm household itself are
D. Included in output and valued at producer prices
The SNA production boundary includes all production of goods for own final use; subsistence crops are output, valued at prices of similar goods sold on markets. Excluding them would understate agriculture badly where subsistence farming is common.
Residuals of a semi-log trend fitted to annual crop output are positively autocorrelated. What is the usual consequence for ordinary least squares?
D. Standard error of growth understated, so tests too liberal
With positive autocorrelation the OLS slope stays unbiased but its usual standard error is too small, so significance is overstated. Remedies include generalised least squares or autocorrelation-robust standard errors.
For two people with incomes 1 and 3, Theil's T index is 0.1308. What is Theil's T for two people with incomes 2 and 6?
D. 0.1308
Theil's T is scale invariant: doubling every income leaves y_i/mu unchanged, so T stays 0.1308. Check: mu = 4, T = 0.5 x (0.5 ln 0.5 + 1.5 ln 1.5) = 0.1308. Doubling it confuses T with the variance, which is not scale invariant.
This plan follows where our questions actually fall, so the time goes where the marks are likely to be. It is our reading of the syllabus, not the exam body's weighting.
Read the manual chapters for these first and do every worked question you can find on them.
Aim for one sitting per unit, then mixed questions across them.
Learn the definitions, classifications and standard numbers; these units are more often recalled than worked.
Come back to these after a first pass, untimed, and read every explanation, including for the options you rejected.
Do these early in revision so they are fast on the day.
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