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here may have been a sharp rise in the exchange rate of the US$ in the middle of the 1980s, and conclude that it does not appear to that their initial result was due simply to their choice of an endpoint marked by the debt crisis “export desperation” and real devaluation of the currencies of the developed countries. It is, however, true that the negative trends in both the series become more pronounced if 1983-89 is included into the sample.

Athukorala (1993) looks at the “pitfalls” in the data analysis of the Sarkar-Singer (1991, p.338) hypothesis and feels there are two major pitfalls in the analysis of country level results “confirm the results of the aggregate analysis”. The first major pitfall Athukorala points out is the limitations of unit value indices a proxy measure of the ‘true’ price changes of manufactured goods, in particular the changes in product mix can generate imitation price movements. Secondly, Athukorala points out the fact that 80% of manufactures exports of the indebted countries constitutes intra-indebted country trade whereas only 25% of manufactured exports of the developed countries constitutes intra-developed country trade. Athukorala continued to question the UN definition of manufactures which covers all the commodities in standard international trade classification. Athukorla finds that the country level results do not seem to support the results o the aggregative study. So he jumps to the conclusion that country level estimates are ‘more appropriate in grounds of lower aggregation bias.’ Sarkar-Singer’s responded by showing a study by L?cker (1993), whose results support Sarkar-Singer. Athukorala’s fifth criticism of Sarkar-Singer is the use of the United Nation productivity index for the total manufacturing sector of the developed country as an indicator of labour productivity in their export-orientated manufacturing sector.

Athukorala (1993) concluded that the alternative net barter terms of trade trend estimates were based in appropriately adjusted data and an alternative interpretation of Sarkar-Singer results at the country level strongly suggest that, during the period under study, the terms of trade for manufactures exports from developed countries has been basically trendless. It appears though the expansion of manufactured good exports, developed countries as a group have been able to achieve significant gains in import purchasing power without generally any significant adverse impact on their net barter terms of trade. Another of Athukorala’s criticisms of Sarkar-Singer (1991) was the comment “beyond the scope of the paper”, in Athukorala’s view, meant that Sarkar-Singer “placed little emphasis” on the findings that the income terms of trade o the developed countries for manufactured exports have shown a strong upward movement. Sarkar and Singer further comment that “beyond the scope of this paper” was not the income terms of trade but the “increased capacity to import has served to finance debt payments rather than imports” stating that two papers Sarkar (1991) and Sarkar-Singer (1992) looked into this in detail. Sarkar-Singer’s assumption is that the differences in the rate of growth of labour productivity in the total manufacturing sectors of the developing countries and the indebted countries also indicate the actual difference between the rates of growth of labour productivity in the export-orientated manufacturing sectors of the two regions.

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