ABSTRACT
Trade, industry and the interaction between trade and industry were central concerns for Raul Prebisch. Prebisch played a key role not only in shaping the history of ideas, but also in the development of global institutions (notably ECLAC and UNCTAD). Primary-product producers should industrialise, and, given the global distribution of industrial capabilities, this required governments to intervene in the trade regime to support import substitution industrialisation (ISI). Prebisch's seminal contributions were developed in 1949 and were the platform for his subsequent work as a leading development thinker and practitioner. Although the Prebisch-Singer thesis (PST) of the terms of trade is widely accepted in development theory and policy, an industry of researchers has pored over and shaken the various datasets to determine whether this has indeed been a real phenomenon. The post-2003 decade-long commodity-price boom has no historical precedent over the past two centuries.
