Research on Improved Methods of Estimating Production and Income Across Nations

Prop ID：0317699 P I：Feenstra，Robert C.组织：国家经济研究局公司标题：关于改进各国生产和收入估计方法的研究有一个明显的需求，即对购买力平价（PPP）和国民账户总量的国际可比衡量标准。比较各国购买力平价的系统研究始于1968年的联合国国际比较项目，基准比较由宾夕法尼亚大学的欧文克拉维斯共同指导，并在欧盟、经合组织和世界银行的指导下继续进行。这项工作在支出方面的延伸体现在宾夕法尼亚世界表中，其中包括170个国家1950-2000年部分或全部年份的20多个变量，这是一个广泛使用的研究和教学工具。与此同时，格罗宁根大学对许多国家的生产方面进行了研究，并提供给研究人员使用，这项建议的学术价值是：（a）利用国际贸易、价格、和生产力的措施，从国际数据中心在加州大学戴维斯分校和格罗宁根增长和发展中心在荷兰;和B）改进研究中使用的价格平价的估算方法，并将其汇总为支出和生产类别，这项研究还将涉及布里斯班的昆士兰州大学经济学院。这些改进将侧重于明确指出估计中涉及的错误，并提供新的和/或改进的经济结构衡量标准。研究的更广泛影响将是：a）提出估计技术，以改进消费物价指数等时间指数和价格、生产和收入的空间比较，如PWT中所载的以及经合组织和世界银行等其他组织所编制的指数; B）该建议涉及改进PWT的传播和覆盖面，包括增加变量、将有更多政策应用的购买力平价的本年度初步估计数，以及开发交互式软件，作为研究人员和学生的教学工具;以及c）作为研究的副产品，研究中心将制定一项计划，建立一个国际价格档案，并将其与产品和出口特征相关联，可供用户在网络上使用。

Prop ID: 0317699 P I: Feenstra, Robert C. Organization:National Bureau of Economic Research Inc Title: Research on Improved Methods of Estimating Production and Income Across NationsThere is a demonstrated demand for internationally comparable measures of purchasing power parities (PPP) and of national accounts aggregates across space as well as time. Systematic research on comparing PPP's across countries began with the UN International Comparison Project in 1968, where benchmark comparisons were jointly directed by Irving Kravis at Penn and continued under EU, OECD and World Bank direction. An extension of this work on the expenditure side is embodied in the Penn World Tables (PWT), which includes over 20 variables covering 170 countries for some or all of the years from 1950-2000, a widely used research and teaching tool. In a parallel fashion, studies on the production side have been carried out for a large number of countries at the University of Groningen and made available for the use of researchers.The intellectual merit of this proposal is to a) more clearly distinguish conceptually and empirically between production and income of countries, drawing on the expertise of the investigators and consultants on international trade, prices, and productivity measures from the Center for International Data at the University of California, Davis and the Groningen Growth and Development Center in the Netherlands; and b) to improve the way in which price parities used in research are estimated and aggregated for expenditure and production categories, research that will additionally involve the School of Economics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. These improvements will focus on clearly indicating the errors involved in the estimates, and providing new and/or improved measures of the economic structures of economies.The broader impacts of the research will be to a) suggest estimation techniques that would improve temporal indexes like the CPI and spatial comparisons of prices, production, and income such as those contained in PWT and which other groups like the OECD and World Bank produce; b) the proposal involves improvements in the dissemination and coverage of PWT, including additional variables, preliminary current year estimates of PPP's that will have more policy applications, and the development of interactive software that will be of use to researchers and for students as a pedagogical tool; and c) as a by-product of the research, the research centers will develop an initiative to create an archive of international prices with associated product and outlet characteristics that would be made available for users on the web.