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 With respect to the index number theory side of the project:  
 
Edgeworth identifies Bishop Fleetwood's 1707 Chronicon Preciosum,  as "the 
earliest treatise on index-numbers and one of the best". In the Making and 
Use of Index Numbers, Irving Fisher cites other occasional uses in the 
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Interest in index numbers 
expanded dramatically in the later nineteenth century with the beginning of 
publication of some of the most important early index numbers, e.g., the 
Economist series in 1869, Sauerbeck's series in 1886, and Soetbeer's series 
in 1886 . 
  
Fisher says that Jevons "seems to have been the first to have kindled in 
others an interest in the subject and may perhaps be considered the father 
of index numbers". Jevons's (Investigations into Currency and Finance) 
approach was developed by Edgeworth. 
 
Taking another approach, Fisher devised a set of desirable properties for 
the function that expresses the price level change from one situation to 
another and tests to see which methods of calculating index numbers possess 
these desirable properties.  
 
The approach to index number theory that is currently dominant, based on 
comparisons of welfare, was introduced by Konus in 1924 (English 
translation, 1939), and developed in the 1920s and 1930s by, among others, 
Haberler, Keynes, Frisch, Allen and Staehle. The 1936 review article by 
Frisch in Econometrica is a good place to start. 
 
Among Keynes's earliest papers are several on index numbers and he continued 
to write interesting things on the subject through the General Theory.  
 
Diewert is a major authority on recent index number theory. 
 
Marilyn Waring's book If Women Counted has some good references on the 
National Income and Product Accounts. 
 
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