We describe the relation between welfare growth and productivity growth. We argue that differences in productivity and productivity growth between sectors or countries are irrelevant from a policy perspective. Specialisation is based on the comparative advantages of countries. Since, by nature,...

This paper examines whether terms of trade shocks have an asymmetric effect on private savings in transition economies. A simple three-period framework is developed to show that, in the presence of binding credit constraints in bad states of nature, savings rates can be sensitive to favorable...

This paper examines the determinants of Uganda’s inflation rate during 1994M7-2005M6. We test the central hypothesis that Uganda’s inflation rate is always and everywhere a non-monetary phenomenon. A theoretical background relating inflation to monetary and other non-monetary factors is...

The object of the paper is to explain Latin America’s growth slowdown experienced in 1998/99. To do so we used two complementary methodologies. The first one aimed at determining how much of the slowdown could be explained by specific external factors, namely, the terms of trade, international...

In this paper, we present a technique to decompose changes in factor prices into the contribution of major determinants, namely movements in domestic and international prices, changes in capital and labour quantities, and technological progress. This is done in an open-economy framework. While...

Although the empirical literature is not unanimous about the existence of a continuous long-term deterioration in the terms of trade for commodities (the original and most common formulation of the Prebisch- Singer hypothesis) and, hence, about the possibility of inferring their future behaviour...

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...