This paper sets up a small open economy model with habit persistence in consumption in which distortionary taxation is available in a flexible price environment. In open economy, the habit persistence in consumption aggravates the terms of trade externality, absent in closed economy, calling for more aggressive fiscal policy. While optimal labor income taxes are time-invariant in a closed economy with internal habit, they should be time-varying in an open economy to alleviate the terms of trade externality, even if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution equals the intratemporal elasticity of substitution. In a small open economy composed of households with habit persistence in consumption, households’ decision to gradually adjust their consumption and labor hours intensifies the undesirable terms of trade externality or the terms of trade channel. This generates a time-varying wedge between the efficiency conditions of the Ramsey planner and the market equilibrium conditions, calling for a time-varying taxation which takes into account the intertemporal elasticity of substitution and the intratemporal elasticity of substitution between home and foreign goods, in addition to the degree of habit and goods market distortion. The volatility of optimal tax rate increases with the degree of habit, whether households have external or internal habit. The volatility of tax rate shows an inverted U-shape in the degree of openness in the small open economy with habit. Finally, the optimal labor income tax rate moves countercyclically for low degree of intratemporal elasticity of substitution, while it moves procyclically for high degree of intratemporal elasticity of substitution.

US output is more strongly correlated with the output of energy-exporting countries than with that of energy-importing countries. I first document this empirical finding, then construct a three-country model in which countries’ different energy production and trade structures are considered. The three countries are the USA (an energy importer), a non-US energy importer, and an energy exporter. Consistent with the empirical findings, the model produces a higher output correlation between the USA and the energy exporter than between the USA and the energy importer. A positive productivity shock in the USA, raising its output, leads to increases in energy prices and its import demand for energy. The increased energy prices adversely influence output in the energy importer, whereas the rise in US energy imports has positive effects on output in the energy exporter, enabling the correlation of US output with the exporter’s output to be higher.

This is an edited version of a lecture by economist and former Australian Treasury Secretary (2001–2011) Dr Ken Henry, delivered at a Colloquium in honour of Professor J.W. Nevile, held at the University of New South Wales on 10 October 2012. Taking a practitioner’s perspective, the article surveys the management of the Australian economy from the 1970s to the present, with a focus on the reasons Australia escaped the global financial crisis of 2008 and the lessons for macroeconomic policymakers to be drawn from that experience. The author concludes that macroeconomic policy practitioners have to think deeply about microeconomic connections and the potency of different instruments in addressing shocks with different sources. They also have to deal with considerable uncertainty. The global financial crisis demonstrated forcefully that there is no separation between macroeconomics, financial system stability, prudential regulation, micro-level incentive structures and market efficiency.

Sovereign defaults are associated with income and trade reductions and terms-of-trade deterioration. This paper develops a two-country model to study the interactions between income, trade, terms of trade, and foreign-debt default risk and default events. Such default risk and events are costly because they adversely affect the demand for a borrower country’s intermediate goods exports and its income. Consequently, trade flows change due to the income loss and consumption home bias. The defaulter’s terms of trade also deteriorate endogenously, which accelerates its income and trade losses. The model produces procyclical imports, exports, terms of trade, and other empirical features of emerging countries’ business cycles and default episodes.

Following Tulio Halperín Donghi's pioneering work, historians have tried to explain why Argentina experienced a dramatic export-led expansion in the first half of the nineteenth century despite a lack of price incentives. This paradox is resolved by a new estimate of Argentina's terms of trade. It suggests that they probably improved by at least 2,000 per cent from the 1780s to the first decade of the twentieth century, so there were considerable price incentives for export-led growth. Labour and capital moved into the export sector, bringing into production the country's Pampean land – a previously under-utilised resource. This suggests that Argentina's expansion in the long nineteenth century was less a result of internal factors than a response to globalisation.

The objective of this article is to offer empirical evidence regarding the behaviour of the exports and relative prices of agricultural and food products from South America between 1900 and 1950. These were years of intense turbulence, which profoundly affected the countries of the region, generating a deep pessimism concerning the potentiality of the export-led development model. This study offers a new quantitative base to analyse the evolution of exports of agrifood products from South America between 1900 and 1938. The paper also offers a series for the evolution of the terms of trade in the region which takes into account in its construction, for the first time, the relative weights of South American exports of the distinct agricultural products.

This study aims to answer whether empirical records confirm the existence of a secular decline in the terms of trade affecting primary producers (the Singer–Prebisch hypothesis). The paper analyses the evolution of the terms of trade for agricultural and food products in the second half of the 20th century. We obtain sixty new real price indices for internationally traded agricultural products. We conclude, from a long-term perspective, that the deterioration in the terms of trade for agricultural and food products was strong and clear in the second half of the last century. In general, less processed products suffered a very heavy fall in their real prices. However, there was no continuous and persistent deterioration in the terms of trade either as a whole or for the great majority of the agricultural and food product groups (with the exception of natural rubber, textile fibres and other raw materials). Rather, this deterioration occurred in stages.

New estimates of Spain's current-account balance with the «Indies» add new perspectives to the recent debate on the aims and results of Spanish commercial policy. At the height of «comercio libre» in 1784–92, Spain's private commercial interests appear to have drawn larger financial returns from the Indies than did their British counterparts from wider colonial engagement. On this as on other scores, by the eve of the French wars the Spanish empire appears to have become a sounder economic proposition than might be inferred from recent pessimistic views. The empire's subsequent demise may have involved a greater degree of geographical and dynastic accident than is seemingly apparent.