The terms of trade for commodities since the mid-19th century*

Jose Antonio Ocampo and Mariángela Parra-Lancourt
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Mariangela Parra Lancourt

Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 2010, vol. 28, issue 1, 11-43

Abstract: This paper shows that there was an improvement in the barter terms of trade for non-fuel commodities vs. manufactures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, followed by significant deterioration over the rest of the 20th century. However, the decline over most of the 20th century was neither continuous nor was it distributed evenly among different commodity groups. The far-reaching changes that the world economy underwent around 1920 and again around 1979 led to a stepwise deterioration which, over the long term, was reflected in roughly a halving of real commodity prices. Tropical agriculture fared the worst, whereas minerals had the best performance, with non-tropical agriculture in an intermediate situation. The increase experienced in the first decade of the 21st century may be the beginning of a long-term upward trend, but it is too soon to tell.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:reveco:v:28:y:2010:i:01:p:11-43_99

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().