Argentina is a South American champion of economic instability, Chile its polar opposite. Yet they occupy the top two slots in a new estimate of household consumption in ten South American countries. The rankings, published this week, are the first results of the International Comparison Programme (ICP) managed by the World Bank, which compares price levels and GDP per head across more than 100 economies based on purchasing power parities—exchange rates adjusted to reflect the price of an identical basket of goods and services in different countries. Paraguay and Bolivia are the laggards in regional consumption; the region's biggest economy, Brazil, ranks sixth.
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