International Comparison in Historical Perspective: Reconstructing the 1934-36 Benchmark Purchasing Power Parity for Japan, Korea and Taiwan

Kyoji Fukao, 京司 深尾, キョウジ フカオ, Debin Ma, 徳斌 馬 and Tangjun Yuan

No a442, Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: This paper provides the first estimate of consumption purchasing power parity (PPP) converters for 1934-36 Japan, Korea and Taiwan by matching prices of more than 50 types of goods and services with consumption weights derived from household expenditure surveys. We find that the 1934-6 average consumer prices of Korea and Taiwan were about 0.86 and 0.84 times that of Japan respectively. Using our new benchmark estimate, we make a theoretical and empirical investigation on the possible sources of biases in existing estimates based on the exchange rate conversion and the 1990 backward projected method. Our estimate provides a vital link that allows us to conduct an overall review of structural change, ethnic income distribution and the historical trend of economic convergence or divergence for these three economies in the past century.

Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2003-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-ifn and nep-sea
Note: Bibliography: p. 24-25
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/13860/DP442.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: International Comparison in Historical Perspective: Reconstructing the 1934-36 Benchmark Purchasing Power Parity for Japan, Korea and Taiwan (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:hituec:a442

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