Re: Postrel on liberalization

[Alan G Isaac <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Sun, 25 Aug 2002, Alan G Isaac wrote:

>> Henry,   As I already indicated, not even a mediocre
>> economist would overlook such an obvious point, and
>> Sala-i-Martin is no mediocrity.  But since your suspicions
>> run so deep, you can also turn to the papers.  From the
>> "Rise" paper p.17:

On Mon, 26 Aug 2002 12:33:48 -0400 (EDT) Diego Miranda <miranda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> If it serves to make an ideological point, many a mediocre economist has
> often used nominal figures to convince a non-informed reader.  Take for
> example the analysis about the 'explosive' growth of spending in Arngetina
> since the late 1990s, or the 'evident' missalignment of relative prices
> that finally resulted in devaluation.

I am quite sure you are not quoting from the papers under
discussion, so perhaps you can provide a cite.

> Not only are these fake poverty lines set arbitrarilly  to suit a
> particular taste for policy,

Are you claiming that these poverty lines are not part of
the discussion to which Sala-i-Martin is responding??
You will have a damn hard time making that case.
Keep in mind this piece has a very simple goal: to show
that a popular interpretation of the world income
distribution data is mistaken.

> but they are hardly  comparable accross
> countries, even if you use 'constant' 1985 values.  First, the value of
> the basket  of goods and services that makes up a poverty line varies from
> country to country. Second, even if you were to accept that due to lack of
> data you could do without calculating such basket, any other
> arbitrary 'poverty line' should at least be PPP adjusted, which is not the
> case in this piece.

Quoting from p.3 of the income distribution piece:
    "We start with the PPP-adjusted GDP data from Heston,
    Summers, and Aten (2001)."

Cheers,
Alan Isaac