Commodity prices

Just thought I’d post the graph here:

Mark Perry, via MR.

In the graph, there’s included a downward sloping trend. Just two remarks, do note that…

1) given the volatility of this dataset, a lot depends on which time period you’re looking at; a trend from 1935 to 1980 would most likely slope upwards, so it’s not like it’s a natural law that commodity prices slope downwards over time, and…

2) it depends a lot on which commodities you’re looking at. Here’s a graph mapping the cost development of coal, natural gas, petroleum ect.; every single one of these price indexes increased from 1970 to 2000. If you like, you can compare this with this graph of world grain prices over (roughly) the same time period. Incidentally, the estimated world population grew by more than 50 percent during that time period.

Share of world GDP by region, 1969-2009

You can read more about these numbers at Mark Perry’s blog. The world’s real GDP has more than trippled during this period.

…

Update: A commenter at Carpe Diem has added a link to the graph below in the comments section, taking the population variable into consideration as well. The graph is quite big, so I’ve only added a small version – click to see it in a higher resolution. Do note that the variable ‘Asia’ is not the same as the one used in the graph above, as The Middle East is included in the latter but not the former, a region which incidentally has experienced substantial population growth during the period in question. Also note that the x-variable is not smooth but rather changes interval from left to right at 1950.