Missing Tariffs

Feodora Teti

No 19851, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper reveals significant errors in a key variable in international trade: tariff rates. The issues arise from incomplete reporting, leading to measurement error from false interpolation by the data provider, the World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS), and selection bias from dropping tariffs when no trade is recorded. I develop a novel interpolation algorithm to correct these issues and construct a global tariff dataset. Reestimating recent studies relying on WITS data highlights the importance of correcting these errors. Studies using cross-country tariff variation, such as estimates of the trade elasticity, are particularly sensitive to the mishandling of the tariff data.

Keywords: Tariffs; Preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19851 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19851

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19851

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().