International and Interarea Comparisons of Income, Output, and Prices

by Heston, Alan W.; Lipsey, Robert E.

• ISBN13: 9780226331102
• ISBN10: 0226331105
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-01-14
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Economists wish to compare prices, real income, and output across countries and regions for many purposes. In the past, such comparisons were made in nominal terms, or by using exchange rates across countries, ignoring differences in price levels and thus distorting the results. Great progress has been made in interspatial comparisons in the past thirty years, but descriptions and discussions of the new measures have been scattered in unpublished or inaccessible papers. International and Interarea Comparisons of Income, Output, and Prices includes discussions of developments in the United Nations International Comparison Program, the largest effort in this field, and in the ICOP program on the production side, including efforts in both to extend the comparisons to the formerly planned economies. Other papers in this volume explore new programs on interspatial comparisons within the United States. There are also theoretical papers on how interspatial comparisons should be made and several examples of uses of such comparisons.

Table of Contents

Prefatory Note	xi
Introduction	1	(12)
Alan Heston
Robert E. Lipsey
I. Theoretical Bases of Multilateral Interspatial Comparisons
Axiomatic and Economic Approaches to International Comparisons
W. Erwin Diewert
Comment: Irwin L. Collier Jr.	13	(96)
International Comparisons Using Spanning Trees	109	(124)
Robert J. Hill
II. Interarea Price and Wage Comparisons
Interarea Price Comparisons for Heterogeneous Goods and Several Levels of Commodity Aggregation
Mary F. Kokoski
Brent R. Moulton
Kimberly D. Zieschang
Comment: Paul Pieper	123	(48)
Constructing Interarea Compensation Cost Indexes with Data from Multiple Surveys
W. Brooks Pierce
John W. Ruser
Kimberly D. Zieschang
Comment: Joel Popkin	171	(40)
Cities in Brazil: An Interarea Price Comparison
Bettina H. Aten
Comment: Jorge Salazar-Carrillo	211	(22)
III. Informal Reports on Methods and the Geographic Expansion of the International Comparison Program
Purchasing Power Parities for Medical Care and Health Expenses	233	(6)
Giuliano Amerini
Comparisons for Countries of Central and Eastern Europe	239	(12)
Alfred Franz
Multilateral Comparison of the Baltic Countries, 1993	251	(10)
Seppo Varjonen
Report on the Romania--Republic of Moldova Bilateral Comparison, Benchmark Year 1993	261	(10)
Daniela Elena Stefanescu
Maria Chisinevschi
A Critique of CIA Estimates of Soviet Performance from the Gerschenkron Perspective	271	(148)
Yuri Dikhanov
IV. Reports from the International Comparisons of Output and Productivity Program
The Measurement of Performance in Distribution, Transport, and Communications: The ICOP Approach Applied to Brazil, Mexico, France, and the United States
Nanno Mulder
Comment: Peter Hooper	279	(48)
Prices, Quantities, and Productivity in Industry: A Study of Transition Economies in a Comparative Perspective
Bart van Ark
Erik Monnikhof
Marcel Timmer
Comment: Irwin L. Collier Jr.	327	(44)
V. Applications of International Comparison Data
The Effects of Price Regulation on Productivity in Pharmaceuticals
Patricia M. Danzon
Allison Percy
Comment: Ernst R. Berndt	371	(48)
Specialization and Productivity Performance in Low-, Medium-, and High-Tech Manufacturing Industries	419	(90)
Edward N. Wolff
Wage Dispersion and Country Price Levels
Robert E. Lipsey
Birgitta Swedenborg
Comment: Andrew Levin	453	(26)
The World Distribution of Well-being Dissected
Robert Summers
Alan Heston
Comment: Timothy M. Smeeding	479	(30)
Glossary	509	(8)
Contributors	517	(4)
Author Index	521	(4)
Subject Index	525