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e Sarkar-Singer (1991) analysis has, however, provoked a number of criticisms, particularly by Athukorala (1993), who emphasised the unreliability of unit value indices as indicators of ‘genuine’ price changes, since they are influenced also by changes in the commodity mix. Moreover, the aggregate unit value series used by Sarkar-Singer (1991) relate to the total exports of developed, and of developing, countries, and not to the trade between these two country groups. This is likely, Athukorala (1993) argued, to bias their results. Sarkar-Singer’s (1993) reply to Bleaney (1993) and Athukorala (1993) concluded that the terms of trade of the South deteriorated not only in their exchange of primary products for Northern manufactures but also in their exchange of manufactures for Northern manufactures. The Sarkar-Singer hypothesis is supported by the empirical evidence gained, regardless of the criticisms, by Athukorala and Bleaney. Bleaney’s (1993) criticisms on three points of Sarkar-Singer (1991) are addressed and responded to, mainly discrediting the point highlighting the time period and end point that they choose to look at. Authukorala’s (1993) criticisms of Sarkar-Singer are responded to and disregarded. Sarkar-Singer created two sub-periods and find, that the results are not statistically significant to disprove the original value proposed by Sarkar-Singer. A study by Maizels (2002) “1981-96 the net barter terms of trade of developing countries showed a significant deterioration in the first half of the 1980s and has been trendless since then, while the terms of trade of developed countries, which had been trendless in the first half of the 1980s, has shown a significant upward movement thereafter. Over the whole period, the relative terms of trade trend of developing countries, compared with that of developed countries, has significantly worsened.”

Wood (1997) compared the price of a basket of developed-country manufactured exports and services with a basket of developing country manufactured exports and concluded from this that within manufactures, between 1985 and 1995, developing countries had experienced a 20 percent decline in their terms of trade when compared with the manufactures (and some services) exported by high-income economies. But this was a relatively crude estimate of falling terms of trade in manufactures.

The Prebisch-Singer hypothesis has been subjected to an extensive debate, especially from Spraos (1980), Sapsford (1985), Grilli and Yang (1988), Balassa (1989), Powell (1991), Sarkar and Singer (1991, 1993), Athukorala (1993, 2000), Bleaney (1993), Bleaney and Greenaway (1993), Lucke (1993), Bloch and Sapsford (2000), Maizels (2000), and Sarkar (2001). All have provided or discussed evidence on the question. Almost all these studies considered trends in the terms-of-trade between, firstly, primary products and manufactures, secondly, imports and exports of manufactured goods by developing countries, or finally, exports of manufactures by developing and developed countries. The last two pairs have been studied because, as Sarkar and Singer (1991) noted, developing countries are exporting an increasing amount of manufactures, and it is not enough to limit the analysis to terms-of-trade between primary products and manufactures to get an idea of the trends in the terms-of-trade of developing countries relative to developed countries.

While studies of trends in terms-of