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PPP — based data (PPP = purchasing power parity) from the International Comparison Project are used to analyze per capita real incomes and relative prices of 30 countries. One result is a cross-country covariance matrix of real income and relative prices; it indicates that food becomes relatively less expensive when we move from poor to richer countries. A second result is a matrix showing distances of relative price vectors for pairs of countries. A third result is a pair of price variances associated with the Florida model for cross-country demand analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kravis and others (1978) made a detailed analysis of the components of the per capita gross domestic products of 16 countries. In this article we use the consumption components of their study for 1970 with four distinct objectives in mind. First, we want to verify Frisch's (1959: 189) conjecture according to which the income elasticity of the marginal utility of income takes negative values which increase algebraically toward zero as the consumer becomes more affluent. This conjecture was considered by several other authors, but the availability of consumption data for countries at quite different levels of affluence is a good reason for a reconsideration of this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We define the quality of the consumer's basket in terms of its luxury — necessity composition. The measure is applied to 30 countries in 1975, varying in affluence from the USA to India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PPP-based data (PPP = purchasing power parity) for gross domestic products are used to assess the affluence of more than 100 non-Communist countries in 1950-1990. A seven-region classification, based on the distinction between temperate and tropical zones, is used to summarize the data on individual countries. The seven regions account for nearly 90 percent of the inequality among these countries in each year. Five journeys around the world are described; the main result is that affluence tends to decline when the traveler moves from temperate zones (in either the Northern or the Southern Hemisphere) toward the Equator. A simple latitude model is developed to explain per capita GDPs: it involves only one parameter, but it accounts for as much as about 70 percent of the variance of the per capita GDPs in each year during the 1970s and 1980s. Another topic considered is that of the G-7 countries, the populations of which are all concentrated in the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measures from statistical information theory are applied to cross-country demand analysis for several purposes. One is to measure the fit of a model for each country separately, including the Strobel decomposition of this fit. A second purpose is to use this measure of fit for statistically estimating the model. It is shown that this method is superior to maximum likelihood when the sample is small but the model is not. A third purpose is to search for outliers. It is argued that a major source of outliers is the underreported food consumption in a number of less developcd countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a population-weighted measure of spatial autocorrelation. It is applied to PPP-based data on GDPs for six regions (PPP = purchasing power parity). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This book is a collection of essays on the use of cross-country data based on purchasing power parties. The two major applications are the development over time of per capita gross domestic products (including that of their inequalities among countries and regions) and the fitting of cross-country demand equations for broad groups of consumer goods. The present introductory chapter provides some of the highlights of these developments in relation to my careers in the Netherlands, Chicago, and Florida. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]