The Comparative Research On Aggregation Methods Of International Comparison Program

International Comparison Program is the activities of international economic comparisons which are organized by the United Nations Statistical Commission, the World Bank and other international organizations. With the social and economic development forward, exchanges and cooperation between countries become more frequent, more and more countries are beginning to realize the importance of international economic comparisons and add to the ICP activities. ICP 2011, the quantity of countries and regions, which will participate in, will reach 200, China will also roundly participate in the first time. The positive participation of China is what the ICP needs to be mature, but also the economic needs of China to be long-term stable development.This dissertation choices the aggregation methods of ICP for the study object. Through combing the relevant literatures, we elaborated the basic principles of various methods and some results of the latest improvements in the multilateral methods, and analyzed and proved the excellent nature of various methods. We also separately compared and estimated the contacts and differences between bilateral methods and multilateral methods. The basic structure of this dissertation is as follows.The first chapter is introduction. This section elaborated the research background, the research content, the topic significance and the structural arrangement of this dissertation.The second chapter is literature review. On the basis of combing the research results on the international economic comparisons and PPPs aggregation methods at home and abroad, this section summarized the problem and limitations of the research results in domestic, and then pointed out the main innovations of this dissertation.The third chapter is the comparative evaluation of the bilateral comparison methods. This section introduced four basic binary indices including Laspeyres index, Paasche index, Fisher index and Tornqvist index. We contrastively analyzed four important properties of Laspeyres and Paasche indices, and proved the country reversal test and the factor reversal test satisfied by Fisher and Tornqvist indices as superlative indices. Taken together, the Laspeyres index is stronger than Paasche index while the Fisher and Tornqvist indices have more advantages. Tornqvist index gives different weights to different products to differ representative. This form of weighting is a significant improvement to binary indices, also provides a reference for multilateral indices reflecting the products'representative.The fourth chapter is the comparative evaluation of multilateral comparison methods. This section contrastively analyzed five multilateral methods commonly used by ICP including the EKS method, the CPD method, the GK method, the Star method and the Minimum Spanning Tree method. On the basis of the basic principles of each method, through analyzing and proving the excellent properties satisfied by each method, we comparatively evaluated the advantages and disadvantages and pointed out the applicative conditions of each method. Specific evaluations were divided into three levels. The first level is independent evaluation to the advantages and disadvantages of single method or derived method. The second level is the comprehensive evaluation to the contact differences and problems of the original methods and their derived methods. The third level is comparative evaluation to the links and differences among the five multilateral comparison methods.The fifth chapter is conclusion and outlook. Conclusion is a summary of the foregoing analysis, summarized in the following four important conclusions. First, most multilateral indices are basis for binary indices. Second, there are many similarities between multilateral methods. Third, the multilateral methods apply to different conditions due to the different building principles. Last, the multilateral comparison methods are still not mature, and there is still much room for development. Based on the study of aggregation methods and related theories of ICP, outlook presented several approaches for in-depth study and research ICP.The main contributions of this dissertation are as follows. First, we fully combed the major bilateral and multilateral comparison methods used by ICP, and introduced the basic principles and the latest developments of the methods. Second, on the basis of basic principles, we analyzed and proved the excellent properties satisfied by each method. Last, from the perspective of reflecting the true level of economic development, we comparatively evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of bilateral and multilateral comparison methods, analyzed the contact and differences among the methods, pointed out the applicative conditions of each methods.