Economic transformation, shifting resources from low productivity to high activities, usually involves some shifts in trade composition and trade diversification.
Country-level and indicator-level data:
Basic trade data
- Total value of trade
- Exports by broad HS Section
- Change in export share by HS Section
- Export visualization
- Top export products
- Top export markets
- Imports by broad HS Section
- Change in import share by HS Section
- Import visualization
- Top import products
- Top import sources
Diversification
- Export diversification index
- Export quality index
- Number of export items and markets
- Number of import items and suppliers
Revealed comparative advantage
- Revealed comparative advantage by HS Section
Trade in value added
- Compound annual growth rate of domestic value added, foreign value added and exports
- Domestic and foreign value added content of gross exports as share of gross exports
- Overall value of domestic and foreign value added
- Compound annual growth rate of Domestic Value Added (DVA) embodied in gross exports by sector
- Sectoral DVA embodied in exports as a share of sectoral gross exports
- Sectoral DVA as a share of total DVA
- Compound annual growth rate of FVA embodied in gross exports by sector
- Sectoral FVA embodied in exports as a share of sectoral gross exports
- Sectoral FVA as a share of total FVA
Trade data is collected from the following data sources:
- United Nations Comtrade (Commodity Trade Statistics) Database
- International Trade Centre (ITC) Trade Map
- Centre for International Development, Harvard University Atlas of Economic Complexity
- IMF Toolkit: Diversification measures
- EORA Multi-Region Input–Output Database
There are a number of pros and cons in using these data on trade. These include:
- UN Comtrade data covers detailed data only from 2001 and for some countries there are no export data so we need to use import data of the main trading partners
- Data underlying the EORA database need to be treated with a lot of caution.
| Area of transformation | Data sources | Pros | Cons | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic trade data | UN COMTRADE | Detailed data provided by over 200 reporting countries, many since 1962 | Max. HS 6-digit level, some DFID focus countries are not reporters | Analysis of top export/import products and markets/suppliers, changes over time, number of products traded and number of markets/suppliers over time, revealed comparative advantage |
| ITC Trade Map | Detailed data (from UN COMTRADE in most cases), available at national tariff line level for many countries, mirror data compiled for non-reporting countries | Covers 2001 onwards only | Analysis of top export/import products and markets/suppliers, changes over time, number of products traded and number of markets/suppliers over time | |
| Atlas of Economic Complexity | Trade data and complexity visualisations for c. 125 countries over time | Export/import visualisations | ||
| Observatory of Economic Complexity | Trade data and complexity visualisations for c. 145 countries over time | Export/import visualisations | ||
| Trade diversification | DFID–IMF Diversification Toolkit Export Quality Database | Indices of export quality and diversification | ||
| Trade in value added | World Input-Output Model | High quality data | Few developing countries, 40 countries included | Contribution of domestic value addition in gross exports |
| Global Trade and Analysis Project (GTAP) | Input – output tables for 129 countries and 57 industries | Not an official data set, basis not fully clear, limited years over time | Trade analysis | |
| EORA | Disaggregated into 189 countries, historical time series over 1990-2011. It includes tables of basic prices, as well as two margins (taxes on products and subsidies on products); | Eora’s MRIO tables were modelled based on existing sources – national accounts data, Comtrade import and export data, among others – when national input-output or supply-use tables were not available. Other limitations go beyond just Eora and affect all MRIO tables. E.g. they are not able to accurately assess the services. They are subject to two assumptions: all products (for export and domestic use) have the same import content (proportionality assumption and they assume uniform use of inputs among all firms in sector) | Contribution of domestic value addition in gross exports (used by UNCTAD, World Bank and other users) |