University of Malta. Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy
Abstract
There have been several studies that explain the change in the world trade structure for agricultural products in recent years. These studies are done by Benejie in 1972, Coffin in 1971, and the most important of all by Barr in 1973. His famous price equation for wheat, well explains the changes. in wheat prices. A is the three years moving average of domestic use of wheat for food, TE is the total ending U.S. wheat carryover stock, and a, b, and c, are parameters to be estimated. Although these studies have provided a fairly good explanation of what has occured in the grain market lately, they left unanswered the question of how the change in other product markets, for example, steel, should be explained. Moreover, Barr has chosen parameters C in his price equation equal to 5 without having a satisfactory explanation for it. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to verify the possibility of such an existing relationship in steel products and to develop productive models for price and volume of exports in the steel industry.peer-reviewe
