Comparing Apples to Oranges: Productivity Convergence and Measurement Across Industries and Countries: Reply

摘要

The very useful and informative Comment by Anders Sφrensen(2001)questions the practice of Using expenditure-based, aggregate purchasing- Power parity(PPP)conversion factors to make Income or productivity comparisons across Countries at the sectoral levels. Sφrensen sug- Gests an easy-to-implement consistency check For the appropriateness of this approach:(rela- Tive)productivity levels should be invariant to The base year chosen for making the conver- Sions. With respect to the comparisons in Bernard and Jones(1996), Sφrensen then doc- Uments that this consistency check fails for the Manufacturing sector.