Econ Articles Created 6/14/1996 This is Brad De Long's Home Page

2Current exchange rate-based calculations of relative productivity levels and living standards show differences an order of magnitude greater than do purchasing power parity-based calculations; it may be that in some senses the exchange rate-based calculations are more informative.

3This pace of real economic growth would be further magnified if the argument that measured growth in the GDP accounts fails to capture much of the growth in real income that takes the form of improvements in the quality and variety of commodities turned out to be correct. Such factors might lead standard estimates to understate "true" economic growth over the past century by a factor of two or three. See, for example, Nordhaus (1994). On the other hand, Simon Kuznets (1963) argued that the constant-dollar current-base-year real GDP calculations that he designed were the most appropriate ones: that we should use the yardstick of the present to assess the past.

4A point made by Kuznets (1963), and expanded on in considerable depth by Pritchett (1994).

5 Williamson (1996) and Taylor and Williamson (1994) point to the factors--largely international migration, increasing trade, and thus converging factor and commodity prices--making for "convergence" among relatively well-off economies before World War I. Dowrick and Nguyen (1989) point to similar factors and document similar "convergence" within the club of relatively rich OECD economies after World War II. W. Arthur Lewis (1978) attempts to account for the failure of relatively poor economies to industrialize before and after World War I.

Econ Articles Created 6/14/1996 This is Brad De Long's Home Page