American Economics Association Distinguished Fellow Citation, 1991.

Kravis made important contributions in several areas of international economics, often with new insights for public policy. These include critiques of import and export price indexes, an evaluation of the role of trade in economic growth, studies of the world income distribution, productivity comparisons, analyses of the determinants of national price levels, and the role of multinationals in world trade.

His most path-breaking work was in developing real product comparisons and estimating purchasing-power parities for countries around the world. This was done first for Western Europe in the early 1950's and then again on a grand scale when he directed the United Nations International Comparison Project from 1968 to 1982. In the latter effort, multilateral techniques were worked out, inevitably representing a compromise between practical and theoretical considerations that made it possible to compare real quantities and price parities in different countries at various levels of aggregation. This represented the first giant steps toward realizing a full worldwide national accounts system that permits real interspacial as well as intertemporal quantity comparisons. The output from this is widely used today and the analysis has become a routine exercise of the European Community and the OECD countries. Altogether, by now more than 80 countries have participated in this work, essentially following the methods established under Kravis's leadership.