"The book discusses the links between primary commodity prices and the OECD rate of unemployment. A descriptive account of the main facts and a VAR analysis help define the essential features of the macroeconomic model which constitutes the core of the book.

The model simultaneously determines the industrialized countries' economic activity, primary commodity prices, the world real interest rate and LDC external debt: thereby it comprehensively accounts both for the impact of primary prices on the OECD economy as well as for the feedback running from the primary commodity and other global markets, to the OECD economy. Dynamic simulations of oil price shocks elucidate the propagation mechanism of the system and the specific contribution played by each factor in transmitting the shock.

Finally the model throws further light, both from the theoretical and empirical point of view, on issues like hysteresis in the rate of unemployment, the NAIRU and the low frequency evolution of some relevant world wide macro-economic variables."--BOOK JACKET.