The Great Moderation and the New Business Cycle
Ann Spehar
Volume 10, Number 1, 2009
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The World is not Flat
Implications for the construction of globalisation indicators
Philippe De Lombaerde & P. Lelio Iapadre
Volume 9, Number 4, 2008, pages 159 - 180
This paper reviews different proposals for the measurement of globalisation,
arguing that available composite indicators, although going beyond a purely
economic definition of international integration, fail to perform their task
adequately for a variety of conceptual and methodological reasons. ... Read more
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The West and the Rest in the World Economy: 1000–2030
Maddisonian and Malthusian interpretations
Angus Maddison
Volume 9, Number 4, 2008, pages 75 - 100
This paper analyses the forces determining per capita income levels of nations
over the past millennium and the prospects to 2030. In the year 1000 AD,
Asian countries were in the lead. By 1820, per capita GDP in Western Europe
and the US was twice the Asian average. The divergence had grown much ... Read more
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International Comparisons of GDP
Is there an alternative to PPPs to obtain real GDP estimates?
Elio Lancieri
Volume 9, Number 3, 2008, pages 177 - 210
The recent publication by the World Bank of PPP-GDP estimates for 2005, referred to 146 countries, seems a good occasion to reopen the long-standing debate on the use of Purchasing Power Parities. While theoretical speculations on the subject have continued, no estimates were supplied for more than ... Read more
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Global Income Inequality
A review
Branko Milanovic
Volume 7, Number 1, 2006, pages 131 - 157
This paper presents a non-technical summary of the current state of debate on the measurement and implications of global inequality (inequality between citizens of the world). It discusses the relationship between globalization and global inequality. It shows why global inequality matters and propos ... Read more
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Measuring Global Poverty Right
Mission impossible?
M. G. Quibria
Volume 6, Number 4, 2005, pages 111 - 121
The international community is committed to millennium development goals which postulate a vision of global development that makes eliminating poverty and sustaining development the overriding objective of global development efforts. In the hierarchy of the MDGs, the first and foremost goal is to re ... Read more
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Measures of Progress and Other Tall Stories
From income to anthropometrics
John Komlos & Brian Snowdon
Volume 6, Number 2, 2005, pages 87 - 135
How should progress be measured? Today, economists and economic historians have available a rich array of data for a large number of countries on which to base their response to this important question. The need for alternative measures of the standard of living is particularly important for economi ... Read more
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International Comparisons of GDP
Issues of theory and practice
Ian Castles & David Henderson
Volume 6, Number 1, 2005, pages 55 - 84
When it comes to making international comparisons of real GDP, different views,
conventions and practices are still in evidence. The authors set out the case for
using purchasing power parity (PPP) converters for this purpose, rather than
conversions based on exchange rates, and give reasons for ... Read more
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Monetary Policy in an Uncertain World
Charles Bean
Volume 6, Number 1, 2005, pages 31 - 53
In this article, Charles Bean, Bank of England Chief Economist and member of
the Monetary Policy Committee, reviews and assesses the three types of
uncertainty which affect monetary policymakers: uncertainty about the data;
uncertainty about the nature and persistence of shocks; and uncertainty a ... Read more
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What a Consumer Price Index Can’t Do
Ralph Turvey
Volume 5, Number 3, 2004, pages 37 - 42
A monthly consumer price index traces changes in the monthly cost of a year’s
consumption using a sample of prices. But in some months the prices that can be
sampled will temporarily exclude some of the products that were bought in the
base year, Christmas trees providing a textbook example. Wors ... Read more
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Five Centuries of Energy Prices
Roger Fouquet & Peter Pearson
Volume 4, Number 3, 2003, pages 93 - 119
Concerns about rising energy prices tend to occur in times of economic
expansion, to disappear in times of recession. A recurring fear is that, in the long
run, real energy prices will trend upwards. This paper presents evidence from
five hundred years of prices of energy sources for the United K ... Read more
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Valuing the Future
Recent advances in social discounting
David Pearce, Ben Groom, Cameron Hepburn & Phoebe Koundouri
Volume 4, Number 2, 2003, pages 121 - 141
One of the most controversial areas of economics is the practice of discounting:
attaching a lower weight to future costs and benefits than present costs and
benefits. Discounting appears to offend notions of sustainable development and
the interests of future generations. Recent advances in the ... Read more
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Are Multinationals Really Bigger Than Nations?
Paul De Grauwe & Filip Camerman
Volume 4, Number 2, 2003, pages 23 - 37
Multinational corporations are increasingly seen as excessively big and powerful,
and as having dramatically increased in size and power. This perception has led
to the view that the big corporations are threatening democratic institutions of
the nation-states and that they pervert the cultural a ... Read more
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Measuring Consumer Inflation in the United Kingdom
Recent developments and the future outlook
David Fenwick
Volume 4, Number 1, 2003, pages 175 - 184
Responding to Mick Silver’s proposals regarding the RPI, David Fenwick of the
ONS summarises some of the issues that confront compilers of price indices. ... Read more
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Some Proposed Methodological Developments for the UK Retail Prices Index
Mick Silver
Volume 4, Number 1, 2003, pages 153 - 173
The Retail Prices Index (RPI) is one of the UK’s most important macroeconomic
indicators, as well as being used for indexation/adjustments for inflation
to wages and benefits. This paper argues that the dynamic changes in product
markets and consumers’ responses to price changes need to be incorp ... Read more
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Measuring Information Technology and Productivity in the New Economy
Kevin J. Stiroh
Volume 3, Number 1, 2002, pages 43 - 58
The growing importance of information technology raises significant challenges
for statisticians and economists. The US national accounts now incorporate
sophisticated measurement tools to capture the rapid rates of technological
change and dramatic improvements in the performance/price ratio of ... Read more
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The Economics of Happiness
Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer
Volume 3, Number 1, 2002, pages 25 - 41
Economists have long considered themselves fortunate that micro-economic
theory needs only be based on relative utility, as it is widely believed that utility is not measurable in absolute terms. But this view is no longer valid. The measurement of happiness constitutes a good approximation to util ... Read more
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"There Will Be Growth in the Spring"
How credible are forecasts of recovery?
Prakash Loungani
Volume 3, Number 1, 2002, pages 1 - 6
Forecasters are currently echoing Chauncey Gardner’s words that “There will be
growth in the spring”. Or certainly by the summer. Are such forecasts credible?
Yes. This article presents evidence that private sector forecasters have done a
reasonably good job of forecasting recoveries in industria ... Read more
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Measuring Global Drug Markets
How good are the numbers and why should we care about them?
Peter Reuter & Victoria Greenfield
Volume 2, Number 4, 2001, pages 159 - 173
The continuing demand for measures of the size of global drug revenues has
produced a supply of numbers that consistently overstate international financial
flows. This paper shows that, rather than $500 billion, the annual figure in trade
terms may be about $25 billion. As with many refined agric ... Read more
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What Do We Know About the Shadow Economy?
Evidence from 21 OECD countries
Friedrich Schneider
Volume 2, Number 4, 2001, pages 19 - 32
Estimates of the size of the shadow economy in 21 OECD countries are
presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percentage of ‘official’
GDP) over 1999/2000 in these countries is 16.7%. The author concludes that it is
the increasing burden of taxation and social security contribution ... Read more
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Global Income Inequality
Beliefs, facts and unresolved issues
Arne Melchior
Volume 2, Number 3, 2001, pages 87 - 108
While several international organisations have argued that income gaps between
countries have increased during the last decades, the opposite conclusion is
obtained if countries are weighted according to their population size, and if price-level-adjusted income data are applied. Inequality measure ... Read more
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Wealth as a Criterion for Sustainable Development
Partha Dasgupta & Karl-Göran Mäler
Volume 2, Number 3, 2001, pages 19 - 44
In this article the authors define sustainable development as an economic
programme along which social well-being does not decline over time. It can be
shown that the requirement is equivalent to the maintenance of a comprehensive
measure of wealth, where an economy’s wealth is defined to be the ... Read more
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Wanted: Measures of Economic Change
Ralph Turvey
Volume 2, Number 2, 2001, pages 191 - 196
Economic growth may involve change, but there can be change without
economic growth insofar as outputs of some products or employment in some
regions or industries grows while there are equal decreases elsewhere. National
accounts data do not reveal such shifts, yet they may involve investment an ... Read more
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Can Bettors Win?
A perspective on the economics of betting
Leighton Vaughan Williams
Volume 2, Number 1, 2001, pages 31 - 48
In this paper, a survey is undertaken of studies that examines the extent to which systematic patterns of behaviour in betting markets can generate above-average
or even abnormal returns, the latter being most conveniently defined for these
purposes as a profit. The paper concludes that although b ... Read more
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How Clear is the Crystal Ball?
Reflections on the accuracy of growth forecasts
Prakash Loungani
Volume 2, Number 1, 2001, pages 1 - 8
Two salie nt features of growth forecasts are discussed. First, recessions generally arrive before the forecast. Slowdowns are predicted but forecasters are unable or unwilling to call recessions. Second, private sector forecasts tend to be similar to those of official agencies. Some tips for foreca ... Read more
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Hardship and Happiness
Mobility and public perceptions during market reforms
Carol Graham & Stefano Pettinato
Volume 1, Number 4, 2000, pages 73 - 112
This paper focuses on an age-old puzzle: why some societies peacefully tolerate high levels of inequality and others do not. The authors posit that opportunity and mobility over time are as important as current distributions are to the explanation. Assessments of past mobility and future expectatio ... Read more
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Demographic Risk in Industrial Societies
Independent population forecasts for the G-7 countries
Sylvester J. Schieber & Paul S. Hewitt
Volume 1, Number 4, 2000, pages 27 - 72
There is a growing awareness of the aging of populations around the world and the implications for national retirement programs. In most cases, estimates of population aging are based on fixed assumptions about fertility, improvements in life expectancy, and immigration. In most countries, however ... Read more
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Owner-occupiers and the Price Index
Ralph Turvey
Volume 1, Number 3, 2000, pages 153 - 159
The treatment of owner-occupied dwellings in Consumer Price Indexes varies between countries and is the subject of continuing controversy. Ralph Turvey explains the alternative possible treatments and reasons for disagreement.
... Read more
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Reply to Professor Zimmermann
Giles Atkinson
Volume 1, Number 3, 2000, pages 149 - 152
Giles Atkinson replies to Professor Zimmermann’s "A Multi-coloured GDP -or No New GDP at All?"[World Economics, Vol 1 No 3 July-September 2000]
... Read more
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A Multi-coloured GDP -or No New GDP at All?
Horst Zimmermann
Volume 1, Number 3, 2000, pages 141 - 147
This is a reply to Giles Atkinson’s article ‘Re-thinking Economic Progress’ that appeared in the first issue of World Economics (Vol. 1, No. 1, January – March 2000). Atkinson discussed proposals for the construction of ‘green’ alternatives to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the same issue, Amanda ... Read more
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From Big Macs to iMacs
What do international price comparisons tell us?
Jonathan Haskel & Holger Wolf
Volume 1, Number 2, 2000, pages 167 - 178
The authors review recent international price comparisons to examine the veracity of claims about “rip-off Britain”. They reach three conclusions. First, methodologically, the data requirements for a meaningful price comparison are very demanding and most of the evidence does not meet these standard ... Read more
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The Black Economy - Benefit frauds or tax evaders?
Jim Thomas
Volume 1, Number 1, 2000, pages 167 - 175
One answer to the question "How Rich are We?" is to compare levels of National Income either across countries or for a single country over time. However, the relevance of this approach depends on how accurately National Income measures the output of goods and services of a country. While it is dif ... Read more
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Re-thinking Economic Progress
Giles Atkinson
Volume 1, Number 1, 2000, pages 153 - 166
Most national governments have pledged a commitment to sustainable development. The transformation of these pledges into policy is a formidable challenge. Of particular interest are proposals for the construction of green alternatives to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which it is hoped will provide ... Read more
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Extending the UK National Accounts
What can be done?
Amanda Rowlatt
Volume 1, Number 1, 2000, pages 139 - 151
The national accounts measure economic activity. The UK is developing "satellite accounts" which use the framework of the national accounts but aim to quantify other aspects of living standards. This article starts by comparing satellite accounts with the use of indicators to measure the quality o ... Read more
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