Using the Penn World Tables for 1950-1992, we summarize the gross domestic product development of 114 non-Communist countries by means of five regions: the North, the South (“down underâ€), tropical America plus southwest Asia, southeast Asia, and tropical Africa plus south-central...

Purchasing power parity-based data for gross domestic products are used to assess the affluence of the G-7 countries in the period 1885-1994. A simple Cobb-Douglas model is developed for the eligibility to this Group of Seven.