PWT 5.5 README.DOC File
April 5, 1994
The Penn World Table (Mark 5), called PWT 5 here, was described
in
"The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International
Comparisons, 1950-1988" by Robert Summers and Alan Heston, Quarterly
Journal
of Economics, May 1991. The Table itself, an annex to the article, was
distributed to users on a diskette and through anonymous ftp by the
National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A
revised
and updated version of PWT 5, PWT 5.5, has been made available. It
was prepared by Alan Heston and Robert Summers of the University of
Pennsylvania, Daniel A. Nuxoll of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and
Bettina Aten of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with the
research assistance of Valerie Mercer and James Walsh.
PWT 5.5 is a first-stage revision of PWT 5. A more complete
revision, to be designated PWT 5.6, will be available after ...
again through the National Bureau of Economic Research. (See Item 3
far below.) A detailed description of the construction of
PWT 5.6, like Appendix B associated with PWT 5, will be made available.
PWT 5.5 differs from PWT 5 in a number of respects:
1) The estimates for most countries have been updated to 1990.
2) PWT 5.5 makes use of more data from International Comparison Programme
benchmark studies than its predecessor, and this has led to
significant
changes in some countries' estimates.
3) Some changes in methodology have affected the estimates. For example,
the way in which inconsistencies between successive benchmark
estimates
and intervening national accounts growth rates are reconciled has been
changed. Now adjustments for the major components of GDP are applied
only to benchmark estimates and the component growth rates are left
unchanged.
4) The way in which the price levels of C, I, and G are reported (in
Columns 14, 15, and 16) has been changed. Now the price levels are
simply the corresponding price parities with respect to the United
States
divided by the exchange rate. In PWT 5, the price level was equal to
the
same ratio, but divided by the corresponding ratio for the United
States.
(For technical reasons, the component price parities for the United
States
are not equal to one, even though the PPP for overall GDP is.)
5) Some variables in PWT 5 have been omitted from PWT 5.5. (See
DESCRIP.DOC). These and some new variables will be included in PWT
5.6.
6) Errors in the entries of PWT 5 have been corrected. Some of these
involved estimates of populations and labor force participation rates.
The principal correction, however, involved the Investment and
Government shares for the United States. PWT 5 was based (and PWT 5.5
is, as well) on the multi-country national accounts data set
maintained
by the World Bank. Unfortunately, at the time of PWT 5, the Bank's
source for the OECD countries provided United States numbers which
did not meet the SNA standard convention of transferring the
Public Investment component of Government to Investment. (Only the
United States part of the Bank's archive suffered from this
disability.)
As a consequence, all U.S. Investment shares (i and ci) were
understated
and all U.S. Government shares (g and cg) were overstated. This had
the effect of understating the U.S. capital stock, and it also made
all countries' Investment and Government Price Levels (PI and PG) off
by common factors. (Happily, the Price Levels of all other countries
can still be compared directly.) PWT 5.5 is based on appropriately
transferred Public Investment.
The files available for anonymous ftp from directory pub/pwt55 on
nber.harvard.edu are:
File
Bytes
pwt55.asc
readme.doc
descrip.doc
GETPWT.EXE
1365300
4731
11451
25792
PWT55.ASC, the main data file, is an ASCII file. The data
are provided in successive country blocks: the rows refer to years
and the columns refer to variables.
GETPWT.EXE is a DOS program for making extracts from pwt55.asc.
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