CEPII - Gravity

For any pair of countries, from 1948 to 2020, Gravity provides all the information required to estimate gravity equations: trade flows, geographical distances, trade facilitation measures, macroeconomic indicators, etc...

Please review the documentation. If you have any remaining questions, issues, or concerns about the data, contact us.

Reference document to cite: Conte, M., P. Cotterlaz and T. Mayer (2022), "The CEPII Gravity database". CEPII Working Paper N°2022-05, July 2022.

Person in charge & contact: Pierre Cotterlaz, gravity

cepii.fr

Licence: Etalab 2.0

Download

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Warning: do not read the data with Microsoft Excel, or any other spreadsheet software (see FAQ below).

This is the 202211 version.

- CSV
- R
- Stata

Documentation.

Scroll down to the "Archives" section to download legacy versions.

Methodology

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Gravity is obtained by assembling data from institutional sources or from academic researchers.

The database gathers:

- Bilateral trade flows, from three distinct sources : IMF (DOTS), the UN (Comtrade) and the BACI database from CEPII.

- Geographical distance, including distances that reflect the within-country spatial distribution of activity.

- Trade facilitation measures : GATT/WTO membership, existence of trade agreements and nature of these agreements.

- Proxies for cultural proximity : language, religion, origins of the legal system, colonial ties, etc.

- Macroeconomic indicators : GDP, population, etc.

Additionnal distance measures are available on Julian Hinz website.

F.A.Q.

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Can Gravity be opened with Excel?

No, Gravity files are too large to be opened with Excel, or another spreadsheet software. Free alternatives are, among others, R or Python.