The Pacific Basin in World Trade: Part II, Constant-Price Trade Matrices, 1955-1975

This is the second of a sequence of papers on international flows of merchandise trade among fifteen Pacific Basin countries and between them and eleven regions in the Rest of the World. In the first paper in this sequence (Hickman, Kuroda and Lau (1977)) we presented annual data on bilateral flows of exports in current prices among the twenty-six countries and regions for the years 1948 through 1975. The basic purpose of this second report is to present and document data on annual export price indexes of the twenty-six countries and regions and annual bilateral flows of exports in constant U.S. dollar prices among the twenty-six countries and regions in matrix form from 1955 through 1975. A third report will analyze the changing pattern of Pacific Basin trade over the same period. The present report is organized as follows: In Section 2 we present the data sources for the export price indexes. Using these export price indexes, the current price trade matrices derived in the first report(Hickman, Kuroda and Lau (1977)) are deflated to obtain the constant price trade matrices. In Section 3 we examine whether the concept of a Pacific Basin regional economy may still be justified when viewed in a constant price context and describe the postwar trends in its share of world trade and in its internal trading relationships on a constant price basis. In Section 4 we present terms of trade indexes for each country and region from 1955 through 1975 and discuss some of their implications.