The monetary policies of the decade studied had a direct influence on the evolution of real wages in Ecuador. The gold standard brought with it the increase in real wages until 1932. In February 1932, the Ecuadorian Government decided to abolish the gold standard which, together with a heavy public expenditure, produced a significant increase in money supply causing high levels of inflation. The evolution of real wages in Ecuador is similar to the evolution registered in Latin America in two important aspects: in both cases an upward trend in real wages can be observed once the international crisis began; after the increase in the purchasing power of wages, there is a decline. This study is the first research trying to understand the impact of the Great Depression in Ecuador through the evolution of real wages.

Three important current areas of research in the field of international comparisons are the construction of price indexes at the basic heading level, price indexes at higher levels of aggregation, and the linking of comparisons across regions. We consider recent innovations in each of these areas. These innovations have largely arisen out of International Comparisons Program (ICP) 2005, and hence we discuss them in this context. We give particular emphasis to the construction of price indexes at the basic heading level, because we believe it is here that the biggest problems lie. For example, the apparently anomalous results obtained for China and India in ICP 2005 can be traced back to problems at the basic heading level. We also highlight some inconsistencies in current ICP methodology and some promising areas for future research that warrant closer scrutiny in the next round of ICP.

Price statistics and, in particular, food price statistics are much more abundant that those of consumption. In this article we use price statistics to analyze the qualitative variations in consumption and, specifically, the diet composition, a variable which is difficult to observe, but has remarkable implications in the evolution of living standards, health and mortality. Our analysis focuses on the years between 1910 and 1912, in a period of important changes in Spanish mortality, in order to analyze the provincial variation in the level and structure of food prices. The estimated relative price indexes suggest significant regional differences in diets which should be taken into account in living standards and mortality studies.