The Trade Unit Values database

Antoine Berthou and Charlotte Emlinger

International Economics, 2011, issue 128, 97–117

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
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

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Working Paper: The Trade Unit Values Database (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cii:cepiie:2011-q4-128-5

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