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Looking at #611642, what does it mean for the salaries to be adjusted for PPP?
The numbers are denominated in $, does this mean that the salaries take into account the lower cost of living that generally goes with poorer countries? I guess it would depend strongly on the basket of goods that the PPP is calculated with?
Thanks!
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CheezeGrater's bounties
While I may not be the expert on this topic, we can refer to the OECD's definition of PPP for further clarification.
Purchasing power parities (PPPs) are the rates of currency conversion that try to equalise the purchasing power of different currencies, by eliminating the differences in price levels between countries. The basket of goods and services priced is a sample of all those that are part of final expenditures: final consumption of households and government, fixed capital formation, and net exports. This indicator is measured in terms of national currency per US dollar.
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I can add a little detail here.
PPP specifically takes into account price differences of non-tradable (internationally) goods and services.
We expect exchange rates to account for the price differences in things like apples or oil, because they trade internationally and should have the same real price everywhere. However, haircuts and restaurant meals cannot be traded, which means their real prices vary by location.
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Realistically though apples in one city in country A won't cost the same as apples in another city in country B, especially if you're comparing imported apples in one location to local apples in another.
I've been interested for a while in comparing the real cost of living between locations, kind of like what the PPP tries to do. A collective project to capture this data per city would be pretty cool.
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If you dive into the literature on this, it gets really complicated, really fast. That's one reason why simple crude measures are used. PPP is pretty unambiguously an improvement from just doing exchange rate conversions.
Once you try to go deeper than that, there's a ton of stuff you have to take account of and some of it is unknowable (like people's actual preference differences internationally).
If you make any headway, I'll be super interested in hearing about your methodology.
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I'm thinking about building a basket of goods that roughly applies to me and then doing some research on local prices around the world.
I get that doing this research on the PPP scale is a very large task but what I'm interested in seems doable.
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CPI basket of goods lol
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I like that. This is a much more tractable question at the individual level than the aggregate.
I've thought of doing something similar with all the different US tax rates. I want to have a tool where you can input your personal details and get a granular map of what your tax burden would be in every single place in America.
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Combining the local price data with local salary data would give you a usable cost of living comparison.
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When you say apples and oil should. have the same price everywhere, this is ex-tranaportation expenses, yes?
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You'd think so, but I don't think PPP accounts for that. It's basically just an upgrade over purely using exchange rates to make cost of living comparisons.
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PPP is not a bad way to adjust for comparisons.
There has to be a better way
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I agree. PPP is not perfect, but it makes crude comparisons better.
There are conceptually better ways, but they tend to require data that no one keeps in many of these places.
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I hope I've helped clarify your questions.
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Yup thanks!
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  • Purchasing power parity (PPP) is a popular metric used by macroeconomic analysts that compares different countries' currencies through a "basket of goods" approach.
  • PPP allows economists to compare economic productivity and standards of living between countries.
  • Some countries adjust their gross domestic product (GDP) figures to reflect PPP.
  • Some feel that PPP does not reflect reality due to differences in local costs, taxes, tariffs, and competition.

Calculating Purchasing Power Parity

The relative version of PPP is calculated with the following formula:

How PPP Is Used

To make a meaningful comparison of prices across countries, a wide range of goods and services must be considered. However, the one-to-one comparison is difficult to achieve due to the sheer amount of data that must be collected and the complexity of the comparisons that must be drawn.
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PPP = Pin Point Precision, as I call it. @cryotosensei knows it! It's a compliment to him! 😄
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The only answer you truly need.
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Great movie
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PPP is abused to lie and further an agenda
If you want to show a country with a high salary or a lower salary, adjust variables accordingly
PPP relies on assumptions that can be adjusted
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It is how many Bigmacs equivalent production points a country can produce
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