%0 Journal Article %A Harvey, David I. %A Kellard, Neil M. %A Madsen, Jakob B. %A Wohar, Mark %D 2014 %T The prebisch-singer hypothesis: four centuries of evidence %U https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/The_prebisch-singer_hypothesis_four_centuries_of_evidence/9498224 %K untagged %K Business and Management not elsewhere classified %X We employ a unique data set and new time-series techniques to reexamine the existence of trends in relative primary commodity prices. The data set comprises 25 commodities and provides a new historical perspective, spanning the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. New tests for the trend function, robust to the order of integration of the series, are applied to the data. Results show that eleven price series present a significant and downward trend over all or some fraction of the sample period. In the very long run, a secular, deteriorating trend is a relevant phenomenon for a significant proportion of primary commodities. © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. %I Loughborough University