Trade, Technology and Financing for Development

The long-term trend decline in the terms of trade of primary commodities against developed country manufactured goods is usually cited as a major impediment to the growth in per capita incomes in developing countries and the inapplicability of the theory of comparative advantage in the design of development policy. However, as developing countries have expanded their production of industrial output they have been faced with two additional barriers to successful development. The first is the impact of opening their capital markets to foreign investments, creating a tendency for decline in the financial terms of trade with developed countries. The second is the impact of knowledge-based technological change that makes it difficult for developing countries to acquire the increased productivity associated with best-practice techniques, creating a tendency toward a decline in the technological terms of trade. The article thus generalizes the concept of the declining terms of trade to finance and technology.