The authors are aware of the Johnson et al. paper (JME 2013) and other critiques of the PWT data. However, while the LCU numbers are appropriate for single-country analysis, these are not suitable for panel-data format which is a significant part of this study. Therefore, we use the PWT numbers throughout and hope that single-country analysis with these numbers is a reasonable approximation to the scenario indicated by LCU data.
An import question is why are the series for real GDP per capita are taken from PWT 7.0? These series are constructed to be used in cross-country studies, and they are not suitable for the analyses in the paper. See the paper by Johnson et al. (2009). This is a major flaw of the paper and the choice should be defended by showing that using the ‘standard’ real GDP series’ would give the same results. Or the GDP series, downloaded from World Development Indicators (local currency, constant prices), should be used.