The Grilli and Yang commodity price index is one of the most widely used commodity price series in the applied economics literature. This note provides some practical advice on updating this data series by listing the base period index values, identifying relevant data sources, and describing a method for computing subindex weights. JEL codes: O13, F1.

Much research has been devoted to assessing the evidence for linear trend in a time series. We discuss the statistical implications of some recent developments, with specific application to 24 time series of relative primary commodities prices.

In a number of influential papers published by V. N. Balasubramanyam and collaborators during the decade of the 1990s, compelling arguments and supporting evidence was presented to indicate that export-promoting trade and investment strategies attract more and more productive inflows of foreign capital than do import-substituting strategies. This paper revisits these hypotheses in the context of more recent cross-section data and reports evidence to suggest that the earlier findings are robust. Copyright 2007 The Authors Journal compilation 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd .

Various studies have investigated trends in commodity prices in the context of the Prebisch Singer Hypothesis. This paper applies new evidence on significance tests for trends in differenced and correlated stationary processes, to individual price series. It is also investigated how well trends are suited for price forecasts and what these findings imply for developing countries. Few commodity price series are well characterized by a trend and trends are useful for forecasting in even fewer cases. Commodity specialization is still problematic for LDCs but the main issue is a lack of predictability rather than a secular decline. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The assumption of a mutually conditional relationship between democracy and conscription is a persistent aspect of the debate on civil—military relations. This article discusses the relationship between conscription and democracy, in a general sense and with reference to the German case. Following a review of conventional motives for conscription, it proceeds to discuss the relationship between conscription and democracy in terms of empirical coincidence and as a means of subjective military control. Continued assertion of an innate democracy—conscription nexus is found to be at variance with the evidence while retaining some influence over the ongoing debate on conscription. The conflation of democratic citizenship with conscription is linked to tensions with individual liberty and equality before the law.