This book presents an extensive survey of the theory and empirics of international parity conditions which are critical to our understanding of the linkages between world markets and the movement of interest and exchange rates across countries. The book falls into three parts dealing with the theory, methods of econometric testing and existing empirical evidence. Although it is intended to provide a consensus view on the subject, the authors also make some controversial propositions, particularly on the purchasing power parity conditions.

The term Purchasing Power Parity may date from the early twentieth century, when it was coined by the Swedish economist Gustav Cassel, but the underlying concept had been enjoying varying degrees of success since its development in sixteenth century Spain. Even towards the end of the twentieth century, and especially since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, PPP and the stability of real exchange rates continued to be the subject of academic debate. This volume brings together essays covering aspects of current thinking on Purchasing Power Parity, from the various ways in which to test for its existence, to its appearance in different economies around the world, to examinations of the explanations given when PPP does not appear to hold This book was published as a special issue of Applied Financial Economics. The academic editor of this journal is Mark P. Taylor.

Evolution of PPP theory; Modern PPP theory and practice; Selected PPP studies.

This manual gives a complete, detailed and up-to-date description of the Eurostat-OECD PPP Programme, including its organisation, the various surveys carried out by participating countries and the ways PPPs are calculated and disseminated. It also provides guidance on the use of PPPs.

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The use of purchasing power parity as a basis of fixing exchange rates among industrial countries, as proposed by McKinnon, is discussed and contrasted with alternative interpretations of the PPP doctrine. Major policy implications of such a regime are emphasized. Furthermore, a new technique for estimating PPP exchange rates which makes use of price pressure exerted by exchange deviation is introduced. This method is capable of solving the “base-year” problem more satisfactorily than the traditional Cassel-Keynes methodology. Estimated yen/dollar and mark/dollar PPP exchange rates are close to estimates derived using other methods.