IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nzt/nztwps/06-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Past, Present and Future Developments in New Zealand’s Terms of Trade

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This paper looks at the importance of the terms of trade for the New Zealand economy by examining the impact of changes in the trend and volatility of the terms of trade on economic growth. It is found that the volatility in the terms of trade has had a negative impact on New Zealand’s economic growth between 1950 and 2005. However, it is found that rather than the level of the terms of trade having an impact on growth, it is the level of export prices that have had a significant positive effect with the level of import prices having an insignificant impact. This paper also examines the historical patterns in the trend and volatility to see if and why they have changed over time. As New Zealand is largely an exporter of primary commodities and importer of manufactures, the Prebisch- Singer hypothesis suggests that its terms of trade should have declined over time. However, this paper finds that the terms of trade has not declined and in fact, is showing an increasing trend since 1974. It is also found that the volatility in the terms of trade has declined over time. Using this evidence as well as other issues such as world trade reform and China, this paper draws conclusions as to future movements of New Zealand’s terms of trade as well as any possible economic growth implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip Borkin, 2006. "Past, Present and Future Developments in New Zealand’s Terms of Trade," Treasury Working Paper Series 06/09, New Zealand Treasury.
  • Handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:06/09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2007-09/twp06-09.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Cashin & C. John McCDermott, 2002. "The Long-Run Behavior of Commodity Prices: Small Trends and Big Variability," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 49(2), pages 1-2.
    2. Easterly, William & Kremer, Michael & Pritchett, Lant & Summers, Lawrence H., 1993. "Good policy or good luck?: Country growth performance and temporary shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 459-483, December.
    3. Will Martin & Kym Anderson, 2006. "Agricultural Trade Reform and the Doha Development Agenda," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6889.
    4. Bleaney, Michael F & Greenaway, David, 1993. "Long-Run Trends in the Relative Price of Primary Commodities and in the Terms of Trade of Developing Countries," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 45(3), pages 349-363, July.
    5. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    6. Paul Cashin & Hong Liang & C. John McDermott, 2000. "How Persistent Are Shocks to World Commodity Prices?," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 47(2), pages 1-2.
    7. Cashin, Paul & McDermott, C. John & Scott, Alasdair, 2002. "Booms and slumps in world commodity prices," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 277-296, October.
    8. Andrews, Donald W K & Ploberger, Werner, 1994. "Optimal Tests When a Nuisance Parameter Is Present Only under the Alternative," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(6), pages 1383-1414, November.
    9. Robert A Buckle & Kunhong Kim & Heather Kirkham & Nathan McLellan & Jared Sharma, 2002. "A structural VAR model of the New Zealand business cycle," Treasury Working Paper Series 02/26, New Zealand Treasury.
    10. Andrews, Donald W K, 1993. "Exactly Median-Unbiased Estimation of First Order Autoregressive/Unit Root Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(1), pages 139-165, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Obiakor, Rowland & Okwu, Andy & Akpa, Emeka, 2021. "Terms of Trade, Trade Openness and Government Spending in Nigeria," MPRA Paper 110977, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Buckle, Robert A. & Kim, Kunhong & Kirkham, Heather & McLellan, Nathan & Sharma, Jarad, 2007. "A structural VAR business cycle model for a volatile small open economy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 990-1017, November.
    3. Philip McCann, 2009. "Economic geography, globalisation and New Zealand's productivity paradox," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(3), pages 279-314.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luis Eduardo Arango & Fernando Arias & Luz Adriana Flórez, 2008. "Trends, Fluctuations, and Determinants of Commodity Prices," Borradores de Economia 521, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    2. Christian Gillitzer & Jonathan Kearns, 2005. "Long-term Patterns in Australia’s Terms of Trade," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2005-01, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    3. Gabriel Srour, 2004. "Economic Integration, Sectoral Diversification, and Exchange Rate Policy in a Developing Economy," IMF Working Papers 2004/060, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Cuddington, John T. & Ludema, Rodney & Jayasuriya, Shamila A, 2002. "Prebisch-Singer Redux," Working Papers 15857, United States International Trade Commission, Office of Economics.
    5. Winkelried, Diego, 2021. "Unit roots in real primary commodity prices? A meta-analysis of the Grilli and Yang data set," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 23(C).
    6. Kim, Hyeongwoo & Zhang, Yunxiao, 2020. "Investigating properties of commodity price responses to real and nominal shocks," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    7. Ghoshray, Atanu, 2019. "Do international primary commodity prices exhibit asymmetric adjustment?," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 40-50.
    8. Ehrlich, Lars G., 2018. "What drives nickel prices: A structural VAR approach," HWWI Research Papers 186, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).
    9. Serge Calabre, 2003. "La dynamique des prix et des marchés de matières premières : analyses univariées versus faits stylisés analytiques," Mondes en développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 122(2), pages 21-35.
    10. Haase, Marco & Zimmermann, Heinz & Huss, Matthias, 2023. "Wheat price volatility regimes over 140 years: An analysis of daily price ranges," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    11. Cashin, Paul & Cespedes, Luis F. & Sahay, Ratna, 2004. "Commodity currencies and the real exchange rate," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 239-268, October.
    12. Purba Roy Choudhury & Biswajit Chatterjee, 2017. "Growth in India’s Service Sector: Implications of Structural Breaks," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 15(1), pages 75-99, March.
    13. Firouz Fallahi & Gabriel Rodríguez, 2011. "Convergence In The Canadian Provinces: Evidence Using Unemployment Rates," Documentos de Trabajo / Working Papers 2011-322, Departamento de Economía - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
    14. Gabriel Srour, 2006. "The Implications of Trade Barriers for Sectoral Diversification and Macroeconomic Stability in Developing Economies," IMF Working Papers 2006/050, International Monetary Fund.
    15. Romero-Ávila, Diego, 2009. "Multiple Breaks, Terms of Trade Shocks and the Unit-Root Hypothesis for African Per Capita Real GDP," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1051-1068, June.
    16. Ghoshray Atanu & Kejriwal Mohitosh & Wohar Mark, 2014. "Breaks, trends and unit roots in commodity prices: a robust investigation," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 23-40, February.
    17. Kelly Burns & Imad Moosa, 2017. "Demystifying the Meese–Rogoff puzzle: structural breaks or measures of forecasting accuracy?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(48), pages 4897-4910, October.
    18. Kar, Sabyasachi & Pritchett, Lant & Raihan, Selim & Sen, Kunal, 2013. "Looking for a break: Identifying transitions in growth regimes," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 38(PB), pages 151-166.
    19. Bernard, Jean-Thomas & Idoudi, Nadhem & Khalaf, Lynda & Yelou, Clement, 2007. "Finite sample multivariate structural change tests with application to energy demand models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 1219-1244, December.
    20. Anne Morrison Piehl & Suzanne J. Cooper & Anthony A. Braga & David M. Kennedy, 2003. "Testing for Structural Breaks in the Evaluation of Programs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(3), pages 550-558, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Terms of trade; Commodity Prices; New Zealand; Economic Growth; Prebisch-Singer Hypothesis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
    • F43 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Economic Growth of Open Economies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:06/09. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CSS Web and Publishing, The Treasury (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tregvnz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.