International and intertemporal comparisons of real product in OECD countries: A growth sensitivity analysis

This paper provides two new data sets for comparisons of real income in OECD countries. The first set provides adjusted real series for GDP and its components from 1960 to 1993 based on OECD 1990 purchasing power parities. The second set uses OECD PPP of different benchmark years, and interpolates these applying national price indices. Comparisons between both alternatives, Penn World Table Mark 5 (PWT 5) and its new version (PWT 5.6), in terms of economic growth and convergence, reveal some remarkable differences. Moreover, there are wider differences concerning the relative countries' position in GDP per capita ranking. Estimations of convergence equations based on OECD data yield a better fit than those obtained using PWT data, although there are also some significant differences between PWT 5 and PWT 5.6. Nevertheless, a very positive result is that other parameters of interest in these equations are not affected by the use of these different data sources.