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.

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.

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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.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: A, Schmalkalden University of Applied Sciences (Schmalkalden University), language: English, abstract: "Under the skin of any international economist lies a deep-seated belief in some variant of the PPP theory of the exchange rate." The purpose of this paper is to consider one of the most controversial theory in international economics – Purchasing Power Parity theory – its main idea, empirical evidence, limitations and practical application. The main idea of PPP is price levels changes determine the exchange rate change between two countries. There are two versions of PPP theory absolute and relative. Stricter absolute version of PPP did not find confirmation in reality and relative version of PPP theory was proposed. Despite theoretical and practical inconformity, PPP is present in many models of international economics as an explanation of exchange rate changes. The main apologist of PPP theory and its father was Gustav Cassel. He indicated that the exchange rate determined by price levels is not necessarily the actual exchange rate but the equilibrium one. Also Cassel mentioned that there is a tendency for the actual exchange rate to return to its equilibrium exchange rate. The original idea of PPP theory is described below: “Our willingness to pay a certain price for foreign money must ultimately and essentially be due to the fact that this money possesses a purchasing power as against commodities and services in that foreign country.” In this paper we considered the principle and two versions of PPP theory, discussed its empirical evidence and econometrical tests, and also tried to find possible reasons why PPP theory fails in reality and answered the question is this theory still useful for explaining exchange rates movements.

Eurostat, the OECD and 47 participating countries work together in establishing purchasing power parities, or PPPs, in order to compare the price and volume levels of the GDPs. This programme is called the Eurostat-OECD PPP Programme and the methodological manual provides a detailed description of it. The manual has three aims: first, to explain to practitioners in Eurostat, the OECD and the national statistical institutes how PPPs are compiled; second, to enable practitioners to advise on the use and interpretation of results to users; and third, to provide a point of reference accessible to teachers, students and other members of the general public interested in PPPs and related statistics. The manual has been jointly produced by the OECD, Eurostat and the members of a Manual Taskforce with delegates from 5 participating countries. The electronic version of the manual is made available on both the OECD and Eurostat websites.

This essay is about the management of natural and environmental resources in cross-border areas. It explores a group of geographical, political, legal, economic and cultural factors that arise when political units (such as sovereign countries, dependent states and other administrative units) seek to utilize natural and environmental resources efficiently and equitably while minimizing the resultant damages (for example, prevention of resource degradation and preservation of the physical environment). * Examines various types of cross-border areas at both international and sub-national levels throughout the world as well as their geographical, political, economic and cultural influences on the cross-border resource management * Uses the latest international and area data, resulting in new findings for cross-border environmental activities * Contains a large number of case studies throughout the world including four in-depth case studies of cross-border resource management