Toward an Explanation of National Price Levels

Toward an Explanation of National Price Levels PDF Author: Irving B. Kravis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
"The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the need for a theory of comparative national price levels and to explore some of the elements that seem to belong to such a theory. Most theoretical discussions have maintained that national price levels tend towards equality and focus on presumably temporary divergences from equality. Yet strong evidence has been accumulating that there are large and long-standing differences inprice levels, the highest of which are more than twice those of countries with the lowest prices. Long-run price level differences are most clearly related to levels of real per capita output, with richer countries having higher price levels.These differences have been explained as resulting from greater advantages in productivity for the wealthier countries in goods production, mostly tradable, than in services production, mostly nontradable. The differences in relative productivity may be in total factor productivity or only in labor productivity, reflecting the greater capital intensity of goods production and possibly a higher elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in goods production.We find in the empirical analysis that a large part of the differences in price levels can be explained by structural factors such as real GDP per capita, the degree of openness of the economy, and the share of nontradable goods in output. The only non-structural factor emerging from a preliminary analysis of several of these was the rate of growth of the quantity of money"--NBER website

Toward an Explanation of National Price Levels

Toward an Explanation of National Price Levels PDF Author: Irving B. Kravis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
"The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the need for a theory of comparative national price levels and to explore some of the elements that seem to belong to such a theory. Most theoretical discussions have maintained that national price levels tend towards equality and focus on presumably temporary divergences from equality. Yet strong evidence has been accumulating that there are large and long-standing differences inprice levels, the highest of which are more than twice those of countries with the lowest prices. Long-run price level differences are most clearly related to levels of real per capita output, with richer countries having higher price levels.These differences have been explained as resulting from greater advantages in productivity for the wealthier countries in goods production, mostly tradable, than in services production, mostly nontradable. The differences in relative productivity may be in total factor productivity or only in labor productivity, reflecting the greater capital intensity of goods production and possibly a higher elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in goods production.We find in the empirical analysis that a large part of the differences in price levels can be explained by structural factors such as real GDP per capita, the degree of openness of the economy, and the share of nontradable goods in output. The only non-structural factor emerging from a preliminary analysis of several of these was the rate of growth of the quantity of money"--NBER website

National price level differentials

National price level differentials PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : it
Pages : 46

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Long-run Determinants of Inflation Differentials in a Monetary Union

Long-run Determinants of Inflation Differentials in a Monetary Union PDF Author: Filippo Altissimo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumer price indexes
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
"This paper analyzes the long-run determinants of inflation differentials in a monetary union. First, we aim at establishingsome stylized facts relating the regional dispersion in headline inflation rates in the euro area as well as in the main components of the consumer price index. We find that a relatively large proportion of it occurs in the Service category of the EU's harmonized consumer price index (HICP). We then lay out a model of a monetary union with fully flexible prices, the long-run properties of which are analyzed. Our model departs in several respect from the Balassa-Samuelson hypotheses. Our results are in contrast with the result that movements in the real exchange rate are mainly driven by regionally asymmetric productivity shocks in the traded sectors. Our results point instead to relative variations in productivity in the non-traded sector as the primary cause of price and inflation differentials, with shocks to productivity in the traded sector being largely absorbed by movements in the terms of trade in the regional economies. These shocks are also found to largely drive the variability of real wages at the country level"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.

Price Level Convergence, Relative Prices, and Inflation in Europe

Price Level Convergence, Relative Prices, and Inflation in Europe PDF Author: John H. Rogers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Convergence (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
"If price levels are initially different across the euro area, convergence to a common level of prices would imply that inflation will be higher in countries where prices are initially low. Price level convergence thus provides a potential explanation for recent cross-country differences in European inflation, a worrisome development under the ECBs "one-size-fits-all" monetary policy. I present direct evidence on price level convergence in Europe, using a unique data set, and then investigate how much of the recent divergence of national inflation rates can be explained by price level convergence. I show that between 1990 and 1999 prices did become less dispersed in the euro area. Convergence is especially evident for traded goods, and more in the first half of the 1990s than the second half. By some measures, traded goods price dispersion across the euro area is now close to that across U.S. cities. Despite an on-going process of convergence, deviations from the law of one price are large. Finally, I find a statistically-significant and robust negative relationship between the 1999 price level and 2000 inflation rate in Europe, and that the contribution of price level convergence to explaining inflation differentials is often quite important economically. Still, factors other than price convergence explain most of the cross-country inflation differences."

Price Indexes in Time and Space

Price Indexes in Time and Space PDF Author: Luigi Biggeri
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3790821403
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This book deals with many of the most relevant topics in price index numbers theory and practice. The problem of the harmonization of CPIs and the time-space integration of baskets is analyzed at the Eu-zone level, with methodological and actual proposals on how to proceed for an overall treatment of the matte. Likewise, the construction of sub-indexes for households economic and social groups is investigated, in order to obtain specific inflation measurement instruments. Evidence from most updated databases is given. The questions of the spatial comparisons of price levels through PPPs and th.

Anatomy of Regional Price Differentials

Anatomy of Regional Price Differentials PDF Author: Sebastian Weinand
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783957295514
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Over the last three decades the supply of economic statistics has vastly improved. Unfortunately, statistics on regional price levels (sub-national purchasing power parities) have been exempt from this positive trend, even though they are indispensable for meaningful spatial comparisons of regional output, income, wages, productivity, standards of living, and poverty. To improve the situation, our paper demonstrates that a highly disaggregated and reliable regional price index can be compiled from data that already exist. We use the micro price data that have been collected for Germany's Consumer Price Index in May 2016. For the computation we introduce a multi-stage version of the Country-Product-Dummy method. The unique quality of our price data set allows us to depart from previous spatial price comparisons and to compare only exactly identical products. We find that the price levels of the 402 counties and cities of Germany are largely driven by the cost of housing and to a much lesser degree by the prices of goods and services. The overall price level in the most expensive region, Munich, is about 27 percent higher than in the cheapest region. Our results also reveal strong spatial autocorrelation.

Determinants of the National Price Level

Determinants of the National Price Level PDF Author: Christopher K. Clague
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Prices
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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The Assessment of National Price Levels

The Assessment of National Price Levels PDF Author: Irving B. Kravis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Prices
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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National Price Levels and the Prices of Tradables and Nontradables

National Price Levels and the Prices of Tradables and Nontradables PDF Author: Irving B. Kravis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Foreign exchange
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description
This paper examines changes in national price levels and prices of tradables and nontradables and relates them to changes in variables found earlier to be associated with price level differences among countries. Across countries, national price levels increase systematically with the level of a country's per capita income, and the ratios of tradables to nontradables prices decrease. Over time, increases in per capita income are generally associated with increases in price levels in the industrial countries, although the opposite relationship tended to prevail among developing countries. Increases in income are associated with declines in the ratio of tradables to nontradables price levels more consistently than with the increases in general price levels. Increases in the exchange value of a currency are also associated with declines in the price levels for tradablesrelative to nontradables. Countries with price levels that were high or low relative to those predicted by the structural equations tended to move toward those predicted levels

Price Index Concepts and Measurement

Price Index Concepts and Measurement PDF Author: W. Erwin Diewert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226148572
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
Although inflation is much feared for its negative effects on the economy, how to measure it is a matter of considerable debate that has important implications for interest rates, monetary supply, and investment and spending decisions. Underlying many of these issues is the concept of the Cost-of-Living Index (COLI) and its controversial role as the methodological foundation for the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Price Index Concepts and Measurements brings together leading experts to address the many questions involved in conceptualizing and measuring inflation. They evaluate the accuracy of COLI, a Cost-of-Goods Index, and a variety of other methodological frameworks as the bases for consumer price construction.