Constructed by Robert Summers and Alan Heston of the University of Pennsylvania, together with the late Irving Kravis, the Penn World Tables are the definitive source for real national accounts data. The national accounts for each country, initially in their own currencies, are adjusted using detailed price data to obtain real national accounts in a common currency (U.S. dollars) across countries. These data are invaluable for making comparisons of Gross Domestic Product across countries, and for all manner of research on development and growth.
international, 168 countries
Derived. PWT6.0 was mainly based on the World Development Indicators (WDI) 2000 disk, while PWT6.1 uses the WDI 2002 national accounts for non-OECD countries, and the OECD 2002 (see Electronic Publications and National Accounts of OECD countries: Main Aggregates 1970/2000 2002 Edition Volume 1) national accounts for 30 OECD countries. Data for years not in the WDI or OECD disks are obtained from previous national accounts files used in PWT5.6 and earlier versions. The underlying National Accounts files for PWT6.1 (current and constant 1996 series in local currencies for GDP components) is now provided as a file (see Downloads) with the permission of the World Bank and the OECD.
Base year is 1996.