We study cross-country differences in price and quality in the market for semiconductor wafer manufacturing services. Using a proprietary transaction-level data set, we document i) substantial constant-quality price differences across suppliers, and ii) shifts toward lower priced suppliers....

A currency's misvaluation versus an index of other currencies, termed the currency's multilateral misvaluation, depends on the index weights. This study clarifies the idea of consistency in multilateral misvaluation and provides instructive empirical illustrations using several currency index...

Using a large, new dataset of agricultural prices and quantities for many countries and regions, we create five new international Geary-Khamis pounds – for 1870, 1845, 1775, 1705, and a superior chained series. We show that estimated levels and changes in output per worker look very different...

The Big Mac Index was introduced to (semi-humorously) test the theory of purchasing power parity and measure the disparity in currency values. Instead, in this paper, we consider this index to find out the per capita real-income disparity across 54 countries. We find that the per capita...

The Producer Price Index (PPI) for the United States suggests that semiconductor prices have barely been falling in recent years, a dramatic contrast from the rapid declines reported from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s. This slowdown in the rate of decline is puzzling in light of evidence that...

This paper studies price and quality differences across international intermediate input suppliers. We develop price measures that account for (i) differences in product characteristics, (ii) unobserved quality differences, and (iii) pure (frictional) price dispersion across suppliers. Using...