Purchasing Power Parities and the Size of World Economies
Purchasing Power Parities and the Size of World Economies

Author: World Bank Group

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2020-07-06

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1464815313

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The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a worldwide statistical initiative led by the World Bank under the auspices of the United Nations Statistical Commission. It produces comparable price and volume measures of gross domestic product (GDP) and its expenditure aggregates across economies. Through a partnership with international, regional, sub-regional and national agencies, the ICP collects price data and GDP expenditures to estimate purchasing power parities (PPPs) for the world’s economies. The report provides ICP results for the benchmark year 2017 and revised results for earlier years. ICP data are used for socio-economic analyses by researchers, academics, policy makers at the national and international levels, and by organizations such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, and the World Bank. Notably, PPPs and ICP data are used in indicators monitoring progress towards eight goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the World Bank’s international poverty lines, and the construction of the Human Development Index by the United Nations, among others. The use of PPPs continues to grow and the ICP website (icp.worldbank.org) lists many applications of the data by the development community, academia, media and others.

International Comparisons of Real Product and Purchasing Power
International Comparisons of Real Product and Purchasing Power

Author: Irving B. Kravis

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 1978

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13:

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The purpose of the United Nations International Comparison Project (ICP) is to compare the purchasing power of currencies and the real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of different countries. It is well known that the usual method of converting the GDPs of different countries to a common currency, usually U.S. dollars, at existing exchange rates is misleading because exchange rates do not necessarily reflect the purchasing power of currencies. The ICP has found that the purchasing power of a country's currency over GDP can be as much as three times its dollar exchange rate, and thus the real GDP per capita is three times the value shown in an exchange-rate conversion. The unsatisfactory nature of exchange-rate conversions has become even clearer in the past few years under the new regime of managed floating rates. Changes in exchange rates of as much as 20 percent within the space of a year have not been unusual even among major currencies.