Purchasing power

About: Purchasing power is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2714 publications have been published within this topic receiving 36866 citations. The topic is also known as: adjusted for inflation.

Regional market segments of China: opportunities and barriers in a big emerging market

Abstract: As one of the big emerging markets, China’s enormous population and rapid increase in consumer spending have attracted many multinational corporations (MNCs). Meanwhile, the misconception of China as a homogeneous market often leads to difficulties in assessing market demand and enacting effective strategies. Examines the diversity among Chinese consumers across seven regional markets. Data from a national survey suggest that consumers from various regions are significantly different from one another in terms of purchasing power, attitudes, lifestyles, media use, and consumption patterns. MNCs need to take a cautionary approach when expanding into the inland regions, and must adapt to the local market conditions and devise sustainable strategies.

International comparisons of real product, 19820-1990: an alternative dataset

Abstract: In this paper a new set of current price estimates of per capita income, adjusted for each currency's purchasing power, is presented for more than twenty countries over the last one and a half centuries. A short-cut method is used to derive current price comparisons for countries and periods in which aggregate PPPs are not available. Current price estimates of PPP-adjusted GDP appear to be more economically sound than constant price figures as economic agents react to current, not to constant, prices and, therefore, would allow us more appropiate cross-country comparisons of welfare and productivity. Moreover, the new estimates tend to mitigate the index number problem by rendering less remote benchmarks for constant price comparisons than widely used datasets at constant 1985 or 1990 "international" dollars. Country rankings in the new data set are different from those provided by earlier cross-country comparisons and among the new findings the earlier US leadership and the closer position of Britain and France over the long 191h century can be highlighted.

On a Correct Measure of Inflation

Abstract: Two commonly cited and newsworthy price indices are the Bureau of Labor Statistic's Consumer Price Index and the Commerce Department's GNP deflator. These indices have become an important part of our economic intelligence and are frequently considered to be the operational counterparts of what economists call "the price level." They, therefore, often are used as measures of inflation and often are targets or indicators of monetary and fiscal policy. Nevertheless, these price indices, which represent measures of current consumption service prices and current output prices, are theoretically inappropriate for the purpose to which they are generally put. The analysis in this paper bases a price index on the Fisherian tradition of a proper definition of intertemporal consumption and leads to the conclusion that a price index used to measure inflation must include asset prices. A correct measure of changes in the nominal money cost of a giverl utility level is a price index for wealth. If monetary impulses are transmitted to the real sector of the economy by producing transient changes in the relative prices of service flows and assets (i.e., by producing short-run changes in "the" real rate of interest), then the commonly used, incomplete, current flow price indices provide biased short-run measures of changes in "the purchasing power of money." The inappropriate indices that dominate popular and professional literature and analyses

Shadow economies all over the world : new estimates for 162 countries from 1999 to 2007

Abstract: This paper presents estimations of the shadow economies for 162 countries, including developing Eastern European, Central Asian, and high income OECD countries over the period 1999 to 2006/2007. According to our estimations, the average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of "official" GDP) in 2006 in 98 developing countries is 38.7%, in 21 Eastern European and Central Asian (mostly transition) countries it is 38.1%, and in 25 high income OECD countries it is 18.7%. We find that the driving forces of the shadow economy are an increased burden of taxation (both direct and indirect), combined with labor market regulations and the quality of public goods and services, as well as the state of the “official” economy.

The long march of history: Farm wages, population, and economic

Abstract: SUMMARY The article forms three series for English farm workers from 1209‐1869: nominal day wages, the implied marginal product of a day of farm labour, and the purchasing power of a day’s wage in terms of farm workers’ consumption. These series suggest that labour productivity in English agriculture was already high in the middle ages. Furthermore, they fit well with one method of estimating medieval population that suggests a peak English population c. 1300 of nearly 6 million. Lastly, they imply that both agricultural technology and the general efficiency of the economy were static from 1250 till 1600. Economic changes were in these years entirely a product of demographic shifts. From 1600 to 1800, technological advance in agriculture provided an alternative source of dynamism in the English economy. he wage and price history of pre-industrial England is uniquely well documented. England achieved substantial political stability by 1066. There was little of the internal strife that proved so destructive of documentary history in other countries. In addition, England’s island position and relative military success protected it from foreign invasion, except for the depredations of the Scots along the northern border. England further witnessed the early development of markets and monetary exchange. In particular, though surviving reports of privately paid wages exist only from 1209, the payment of money wages to workers was clearly already well established by that date. A large number of documents with such wages and prices survive from then on in the records of churches, monasteries, colleges, charities, and government. These documents have been the basis of many studies of pre-industrial wages and prices. But comparatively few of these studies have focused on the wages of the majority of workers in England before 1800, those in agriculture. And none of the farm wage studies give a consistent measure