Why Origin Matters in Trade Data

Pierre Cotterlaz and Vincent Vicard

Working Papers from CEPII research center

Abstract: Different reporting standards are applied to determine the country of origin of trade flows in existing international trade databases, altering the geography of trade. We illustrate this issue using two extensively used trade databases, UN-Comtrade and IMF-DoTS and show that it has important implications when evaluating the impact of trade policies using a gravity framework. We provide evidence that IMF-DoTs applies different reporting standards for intra- and extra-EU trade from 1999 onwards. Such discrepancies generate a (significant) upward bias in the estimated impact of RTA, the EU and the euro area on trade. Reporting standards also differ across declaring countries in UN-Comtrade. We show that it inflates the estimated impact of Brexit on trade.

Keywords: Gravity Equation; International Trade; Statistics; Regional Trade Agreements; European Union; Brexit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F14 F15 F62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-inv
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cii:cepidt:2023-23

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