[lbo-talk] Past value of Francs -> Dollars?

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Mon Oct 11 12:28:50 PDT 2010


The problem is not conversion itself, but price indices. If you convert it to USD @ 1970 rates, what price index will you use to express it in present terms? I do not think you can find these for FF and applying US price indices for France is incorrect.

One way is to look at the GDP or its components (e.g. government or household consumption expenditures, depending what your FF figures represent) which for EU countries have been converted to Euro and use implicit price deflator (ipd) for the Euro. So you calculation may look like this: GDP current prices in FF / GDP current prices Euro can give you the imputed 1970 FF to Euro exchange which you will use to covert your amount to Euro and then convert it to the 2010 Euros using ipd, which you then convert to USD @ the 2010 rate.

you can find these GDP figures here http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnllist.asp

I do not believe they give the 1970 GDP in FF, but this can be found elsewhere.

Wojtek

On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Charles Turner <vze26m98 at optonline.net> wrote:
> Hi all-
>
> Folks on this list were really helpful a while back pointing me to conversion methods, 1968 dollars to present values.
>
> My next challenge is to convert French francs circa 1968-70 to dollars. Ultimately, I'd want to state the value in present terms, but doing the currency conversion is what I need help with.
>
> Can anyone point me to books, papers, internet resources, whatever that might help me?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Charles Turner
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list