<< N°128
| N°128 | ||
| Issue Q4 2011 | ||
| The Trade Unit Values database | ||
|
Antoine Berthou Charlotte Emlinger |
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| Trade unit values are commonly used as proxies for trade prices in empirical research in international economics. Existing datasets providing international trade unit values for a large number of countries typically suffer from a number of statistical biases, due to the aggregation of unit values and the harmonization of quantity information. These biases reduce the reliability of unit values as a proxy for trade prices. This paper presents the Trade Unit Values dataset, a new database developed to circumvent these statistical issues. Bilateral trade unit values are computed at a very high level of disaggregation before aggregation into Harmonized-System 6-digits categories to allow for cross-country comparability. Our processing strategy improves the differentiation of trade prices within product categories, as compared to existing worldwide datasets. A simple econometric analysis shows that unit values in our database are well explained by economic aggregates. |
Abstract |
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| Unit Value ; Trade Price ; International Trade ; | Keywords | |
| E3 ; F1 ; F4 ; | JEL classification | |
| Order form |