Re: Euro Rates Slashed

["Alan G. Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Penn World Tables allow for more straightforward
comparisons between countries, so that "richer" and
"higher material standard of living" might correspond
(as normal parlance suggests they should). As far as I
know, no one seriously uses exchange rate based
comparisons any more. Temple's recent JEL article
puts Japan's per capita income at 80% of the U.S.,
based on data in the Penn World Tables.
--Alan


Dennis R Redmond wrote:

> The EU core economies and Japan *are* richer per capita than the US in
> exchange rate terms (using decade averages, and not picking, say, early
> 1998, when the dollar was 140 yen). That doesn't mean their population
> lives better; prices for lots of goods are higher in Japan,
> living-quarters are more crowded in Europe, etc. Unless you have direct
> evidence that the official OECD statistics are wrong (which they could
> well be)?