Relative to non-food items, food tends to be cheaper in rich, as compared with poorEuropean countries. This tendency cannot be explained in terms of cost developments or foreign-trade considerations. A positive explanation proposed focuses on demand-income-supply interaction. An analysis of a...

The oft invoked Balassa-Samuelson effect, whereby the movements of prices for non-tradable goods relative to those for tradable goods reflect the movements of relative labour productivities, is customarily derived from a standard neo-classical model with highly restrictive features. Minor...