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The International Comparison Program (ICP) has become not only the largest international statistical program in the world, but also the most complex. In the years leading up to 2005, six rounds of the ICP were conducted, each with more countries and each with improved methodology. This volume is a comprehensive review of the statistical theory and methods underlying the estimation of purchasing power parities (PPPs) and real expenditures, the choices made for the 2005 ICP round, and the lessons learned that led to improvements in the 2011 ICP. Disclosing the theory, concepts, and methods underlying estimates enhances the transparency of the 2011 ICP process. This book describes the challenges faced by the 2005 round of the ICP, the new theories and methods developed to address those problems, and the lessons learned that can be applied to future rounds of the ICP. The book refers to six geographic regions of the world. This volume also contains several chapters about uses of the data from the 2005 ICP. These uses are significant because they expand the boundaries of the needs served by the ICP to encompass poverty estimation and analysis of the global economic situation.

The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a worldwide statistical initiative led by the World Bank under the auspices of the United Nations Statistical Commission. It produces comparable price and volume measures of gross domestic product (GDP) and its expenditure aggregates across economies. Through a partnership with international, regional, sub-regional and national agencies, the ICP collects price data and GDP expenditures to estimate purchasing power parities (PPPs) for the world's economies. The report provides ICP results for the benchmark year 2017 and revised results for earlier years. ICP data are used for socio-economic analyses by researchers, academics, policy makers at the national and international levels, and by organizations such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, and the World Bank. Notably, PPPs and ICP data are used in indicators monitoring progress towards eight goals of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the World Bank's international poverty lines, and the construction of the Human Development Index by the United Nations, among others. The use of PPPs continues to grow and the ICP website (icp.worldbank.org) lists many applications of the data by the development community, academia, media and others.

Benchmark estimates of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) GDP per capita for the year 2011 recently released by the International Comparison Program (ICP) are compared with the corresponding estimates generated by the World Bank from the ICP benchmark years and countries. Large differences are noted between the two sets for many countries. Of the 163 countries for which numbers from both sources are available, the difference is at least $2000 or 25 % in 73 or about 45 % of the cases, and the differences are huge for a sizable proportion of the countries. The numerous users of World Bank data are urged to exercise caution in drawing strong conclusions in cross-country studies in which PPP GDP per capita is often a core variable. As an additional point, while the ICP 2005 was observed to have revealed the world to be more unequal than previously thought, the current ICP might be stated as doing the opposite.

While much progress has been made over the last 25 years in measuring global poverty, there are a number of challenges ahead. The paper discusses three sets of problems: (i) how to allow for social effects on welfare, recognizing the identification issues involved; (ii) the need to monitor progress in raising the consumption floor above its biological level, in addition to counting the number of people living near the floor; and (iii) addressing the longstanding concerns about prevailing approaches to making inter-country comparisons of price levels facing poor people. Some suggestions are offered for operational solutions, building on past research.

This paper compares data on GDP per capita, which is used in almost every cross-country study, from two different sources which are used by numerous researchers and other users throughout the world. The methodology consists of taking GDP per capita in international dollars for the ICP benchmark year 2005 for each country from World Development Indicators 2012 CD-ROM (WDI) and Penn World Table 7.1 (PWT), which are the current (2012) versions of these well-known sources. A similar exercise is undertaken for World Development Indicators 2011 CD-ROM and Penn World Table 7.0, which are the last versions of the data. The WDI and PWT data are also compared with the benchmark estimates from the last International Comparison Program (ICP). Huge differences are found between the two sources for numerous countries in both the current and the last versions. The number of countries for which WDI and the ICP benchmark numbers show huge differences is small, but there are many countries for which PWT and the ICP benchmark numbers show large differences. The study seems important for judging how data on this crucial variable from two most widely used sources agree or differ. The reported huge differences suggest that the users may exercise caution in drawing strong conclusions from information derived from either source, and may consider doing some sensitivity checks based on data from the other source. A simple illustration is provided to indicate how use of data from each source might affect the results.

The motivation of this exercise is to compare the Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) calculated using different procedures and study the sensitivity of global rankings of regions based on living standards to the PPPs used. The empirical comparison involves the GEKS, weighted CPD, GK, EWGK and the True Cost of Living Index (TCLI) based PPP estimation procedures with the Indian Rupee used as the numeraire currency. The published ICP PPPs for 2011 are used as benchmark for the non ICP PPPs obtained in this study. Evidence confirming the “Gershenkeron effect,” that affects the additive GK procedure, is provided. The results suggest that the EWGK PPPs, which are also additive, do not suffer from the extent of bias of the GK PPPs. The paper also provides evidence on the large variation in the TCLI based PPPs across expenditure quintiles originating from variation in preferences between expenditure classes. This suggests departure from the current ICP practice of providing one PPP for the entire country and points to the need to estimate PPPs by different expenditure classes. The empirical evidence points to the rich potential for the rarely used TCLI in future PPP calculations.

Using data for 113 countries covering the period 1980-2005 we show how international comparisons of income inequality and the way it changes over time are inherently sensitive to (i) the choice of multilateral price index formula used to convert per capita incomes into units of the same currency, (ii) the approach (if any) used for reconciling spatial benchmarks with national growth rates, and (iii) the way inequality is measured. We then consider how best to deal with these issues and highlight some distortions that can arise in such comparisons. Based on our preferred methods we observe convergence when countries are population weighted and divergence when they are not.

The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a large and highly complex worldwide statistical program conducted under the charter of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC). The ICP is designed to provide globally comparable economic aggregates in national accounts that can be used by individual researchers, analysts, and policy makers at the national and international levels and by international organizations such as the European Union, International Monetary Fund, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations, and World Bank. Over its lifetime, the ICP has become the principal source of data on the purchasing power parities (PPPs) of currencies, measures of real per capita income, and measures of real gross domestic product (GDP) and its main components from the expenditure side, including private consumption, government expenditures, and gross fixed capital formation. Indeed, since its inception in 1970, successive rounds of the ICP have produced valuable data for international economic analyses of economic growth and the catch-up and convergence of incomes among nations; productivity levels and trends; analyses of systematic patterns in national price levels and trends; construction of the Human Development Index by the United Nations; measures of regional and global inequality in incomes and consumption; and estimates of the incidence of absolute poverty using World Bankdeveloped yardsticks such as the US

Cover -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Overview -- Governance of ICP 2011 -- Regional and Country Coverage -- Methodology and Innovations -- ICP 2011 versus ICP 2005 -- The ICP 2011 Results: An Overview -- Organization of This Report -- Chapter 1 Background -- Organization of ICP 2011 -- The ICP Approach to GDP Comparisons -- Exchange Rates -- Purchasing Power Parities -- Price Level Indexes -- Real Expenditures -- Actual Individual Consumption -- Uses of PPPs and Real Expenditures -- Chapter 2 Presentation and Analysis of Results -- Presentation of Results -- Analysis of Results -- Reliability and Limitations of PPPs and Real Expenditures -- Differences between the 2005 and 2011 Comparisons -- Comparing 2011 PPPs Extrapolated from ICP 2005 and ICP 2011 Benchmark PPPs -- Chapter 3 Data Requirements -- Conceptual Framework -- Surveys and Data Collection -- Data Validation -- Chapter 4 Methodologies Used to Calculate Regional and Global PPPs -- Household Consumption -- Comparison-Resistant Components -- Reference PPPs -- Aggregating Linked Basic Heading PPPs to GDP -- Special Situations -- Imputing PPPs for Nonparticipating Economies -- Appendix A: History of the International Comparison Program (ICP) -- Appendix B: Governance of ICP 2011 -- Appendix C: Eurostat-OECD PPP Programme -- Eurostat-OECD Comparisons -- Organization of the 2011 Comparison -- Data Collection for the 2011 Comparison -- Calculation and Aggregation of PPPS -- Additional Information -- Appendix D: ICP Expenditure Classification -- Deriving Actual Individual Consumption -- Facilitating the Input Price Approach -- Adjusting the Household Expenditure to the National Concept -- Appendix E: National Accounts: Estimation, Compliance, and Exhaustiveness -- Estimation -- Compliance and Exhaustiveness.