Record Details

What Do We (and Others) Mean by “The Terms of Trade”?

Turkish Economic Review

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Field Value
 
Title What Do We (and Others) Mean by “The Terms of Trade”?
 
Creator DEARDORFF, Alan V.; Alan V. Deardorff
Ford School of Public Policy
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-3091
Tel. 734-764-6817
Fax. 734-763-9181
E-mail: alandear@umich.edu
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/
 
Subject Terms of Trade.
F10.
 
Description Abstract. I explore how the concept of “the terms of trade” has been used since Alfred Marshall coined it. Early writers (Taussig, Viner, Dorrance) constructed variations on the relative price of traded goods that Marshall was concerned with, but most of these variations have been left behind in modern uses of the term, which today almost always refer to a relative price of exports and imports. However, when authors have wanted to identify the terms of trade with a particular country and to represent it either symbolically in an economic model or empirically, they have had to choose between defining the terms of trade as the relative price of exports or the relative price of imports. The first to do this was Taussig, who chose the second option, but he was followed by Viner who chose the first, and Viner was followed in this choice by almost all writers for the next several decades. Then, around 1980, Taussig’s choice came back into fashion among scholars of international finance. I document this contrast in definitions between international trade and international finance, then add slightly to Viner’s argument for preferring that the terms of trade of a country be defined as the relative price of its exports.Keywords. Terms of trade.JEL. F10.
 
Publisher Turkish Economic Review
Turkish Economic Review
 
Contributor
 
Date 2016-06-18
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://www.kspjournals.org/index.php/TER/article/view/853
10.1453/ter.v3i2.853
 
Source Turkish Economic Review; Vol 3, No 2 (2016): June; 281-291
Turkish Economic Review; Vol 3, No 2 (2016): June; 281-291
2149-0414
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://www.kspjournals.org/index.php/TER/article/view/853/887
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2016 Turkish Economic Review
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0