The Trade Unit Values Database

Antoine Berthou and Charlotte Emlinger

Working Papers from CEPII research center

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: UNIT VALUE; TRADE PRICE; INTERNATIONAL TRADE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E3 F1 F4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

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Journal Article: The Trade Unit Values database (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cii:cepidt:2011-10

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