This paper looks at the evolution of the terms of trade between commodities and manufactures in the twentieth century. A statistical analysis of the relative price series for 24 commodities and of eight indices reveals a significant deterioration in their barter terms of trade over the course of the twentieth century. This decline was neither continuous, nor was it distributed evenly among individual products, however. The data show that the far-reaching changes that the world economy underwent around 1920 and again around 1980 led to a stepwise deterioration which, over the long term, was reflected in a decline of nearly 1% per year in aggregate real prices for raw materials.
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series International Trade with number
0402006.
Length: 35 pages Date of creation: 17 Feb 2004 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpit:0402006
Note: Type of Document - pdf; prepared on Win98; to print on ECLAC Review, 79, April 2003; pages: 35; figures: 5 Contact details of provider: Web page: http://129.3.20.41
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Find related papers by JEL classification: F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies Q00 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - General
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cuddington, John T. & Ludema, Rodney & Jayasuriya, Shamila A, 2002.
"Prebisch-Singer Redux,"
Working Papers
15857, United States International Trade Commission, Office of Economics.
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