FIGURE 4.4 Comparison of the uneven shareout by major world regions of production and consumption in (a) the mid-1950s and (b) early 1990s. Note that the regions and the categories of production and consumption differ Source of (a): Cole (1959)

The United Nations Statistical Yearbooks include data on the trade between major regions of the world. The twelve regions used in these sources differ considerably from the twelve used here but, since the data are complex and difficult to interpret even as they stand, it was not considered desirable to modify the UN regions. The main differences are that Canada and the USA are shown separately (not as North America), Africa is shown in total, leaving Southwest Asia on its own, and South Asia (mainly India) and Southeast Asia are combined. Table 4.3 shows transactions in 1990 between and, where relevant, within each of the twelve regions. On account of some small omissions and rounding effects, the sums of the row and column totals do not coincide and therefore somewhat different grand totals result. The inconsistencies have been left, in preference to massaging the data to produce a perfect match.