Purchasing power parity-based data for gross domestic products are used to assess the affluence of the G-7 countries in the period 1885-1994. A simple Cobb-Douglas model is developed for the eligibility to this Group of Seven.

We use international comparison data of Summers and Heston to trace the development of three regions in Western Europe: the countries currently outside the European Union (EEC), the EEC Center, and the EEC Periphery (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain). For each year during the period...

Data from the International Comparison Project are used to analyze the development of the real gross domestic products (GDPs) of the G-7 countries from 1950-1988. For the group as a whole, per capita GDP increased almost threefold in this period, whereas the inequality among the seven countries...

Using the Penn World Tables for 1950-1992, we summarize the gross domestic product development of 114 non-Communist countries by means of five regions: the North, the South (“down underâ€), tropical America plus southwest Asia, southeast Asia, and tropical Africa plus south-central...