IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/199603.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Theoretical foundations of the "Geary method" for international comparisons of purchasing power and real incomes

Author

Listed:
  • J. Peter Neary

Abstract

This paper provides a centenary review of the method of calculating real incomes and purchasing power parities proposed by Roy Geary. This method is the most widely used in major international comparisons, but it is often criticised for its lack of theoretical foundations. I discuss the properties of the method and its competitors in the light of both practical and theoretical considerations. I also propose a new method of computing "true" or, as I call them, "Geary-Konus" exchange rates and world prices and I argue that the Geary method provides the best available approximation to the true values.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Peter Neary, 1996. "Theoretical foundations of the "Geary method" for international comparisons of purchasing power and real incomes," Working Papers 199603, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:199603
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3047
    File Function: First version, 1996
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. J. Peter Neary, 2004. "Rationalizing the Penn World Table: True Multilateral Indices for International Comparisons of Real Income," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1411-1428, December.
    2. Neary, P.J., 1996. "True Multilateral Indexex for International Comparisons of Purchasing Power and Real Income," Papers 96/22, College Dublin, Department of Political Economy-.
    3. Rodney Thom & Brendan M. Walsh, 2001. "The effect of a common currency on trade : Ireland before and after the Sterling link," Working Papers 200110, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    4. Neary, Peter, 2000. "True Multilateral Indexes for International Comparisons of Real Income: Theory and Empirics," CEPR Discussion Papers 2590, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    International comparisons of Real Incomes; Exchange rates; Purchasing power parities; Price indexes; R.C. Geary; Income--Mathematical models; Purchasing power--Mathematical models; Foreign exchange rates;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • C8 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs
    • F0 - International Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:199603. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicolas Clifton (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.