contextualized) approach of individual assessment, when used for mass appraisal, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice, or USPAP, has established mass appraisal standards to govern the use of hedonic regressions and other automated valuation models when used for real estate appraisal. Hedonic models outside of real estate valuation. Aside from its use in housing market estimations, Hedonic regression has also seen use as a means for testing assumptions in spatial economics, and is commonly applied to operations in tax assessment, litigation, academic studies, and other mass appraisal projects. Appraisal methodology more or less treats hedonic regression as a more statistically robust form of the sales comparison approach, making it a popular means for assessment in any market or economic sector in which valuation between two categorically similar (or same) goods (such as two different kitchenware sets) can differ greatly based on additional factors (such as whether the pots and pans made of copper, cast iron, stone, etc, or what non-stick coating, if any, was applied) or constituent goods (including a steamer basket for one of the pots or having the largest pot be a Dutch oven) that strongly influence or semi-exclusively determine the unified good's value. Criticisms of hedonic models Some commentators, including Austrian economists, have criticized the US government's use of hedonic regression in computing its CPI, fearing it can be used to mask the "true" inflation rate and thus lower the interest it must pay on Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) and Social Security cost of living adjustments. The same use of hedonic models when analyzing consumer prices in other countries, however, has shown that non-hedonic methods may themselves misstate inflation over time by failing to take quality changes into account. See also Hedonic index Compensating differential Kelvin Lancaster Dynamic pricing References Further reading Curated bibliography at IDEAS/RePEc Urban economics Single-equation methods (econometrics) Economic data Real estate valuation Regression models