Comparing the wealth of nations: reference prices and multilateral real income indexes
Citation:
Neary, J. Peter; Gleeson, Brid. 'Comparing the wealth of nations: reference prices and multilateral real income indexes'. - Economic & Social Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, October, 1997, pp. 401-421, Dublin: Economic & Social Research InstituteDownload Item:
Abstract:
This paper considers the problem of comparing real incomes across countries. The
available methods are reviewed and their performance is compared using the raw data
underlying the Penn World Table. We propose and implement a test of the "Gerschenkron
Effect": the downward bias in a country's measured real income when its own prices are used as weights. The test confirms that this Effect obtains with fixed-weight indexes but not with true bilateral indexes based on empirical demand parameters. We also demonstrate the feasibility of estimating the GAIA ("Geary-Allen International Accounts") System which yields true multilateral real income indexes.
Author: Neary, J. Peter; Gleeson, Brid
Publisher:
Economic & Social StudiesType of material:
Journal ArticleCollections
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Full text availableKeywords:
Real income, Statistics, Indexes, Income distributionISSN:
0012-9984Metadata
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