Currencies, Commodities and Consumption

Currency values, prices, consumption and incomes are at the heart of the economic performance of all countries. In order to make a meaningful comparison between one economy and another, economists routinely make use of purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates, but while PPP rates are widely used and well understood, they take a lot of effort to produce and suffer from publication delays. Currencies, Commodities and Consumption analyses the strengths and weaknesses of two alternatives to PPP. Firstly, the so-called Big Mac Index, which uses hamburger prices as a standard of measurement, and second, a less well known technique which infers incomes across countries based on the proportion of consumption devoted to food. Kenneth W. Clements uses international macroeconomics, microeconomic theory and econometrics to provide researchers and policy makers with insights into alternatives to PPP rates and make sense of the ongoing instability of exchange rates and commodity prices.

1. Introduction; Part I. Exchange Rates and Prices: 2. Purchasing power parity theory and the Big Mac Index; 3. Commodity currencies and currency commodities; Part II. Commodity Prices: 4. Three facts about marijuana prices; 5. Patterns in world metal prices; Part III. International Patterns of Incomes, Prices and Consumption: 6. Disparities in incomes and prices internationally; 7. Affluence and food: a simple way to infer incomes.

Kenneth W. Clements has been at the University of Western Australia since 1981 as Winthrop Professor of Economics and since 2008, BHP Billiton Research Fellow at the UWA Business School. In 2009, his book (co-authored with X. Zhao) Economics and Marijuana was published by Cambridge University Press. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and in 2009 received from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.