International Trade Price Indices

Abstract

Export and import price indices are useful instruments in international economics. We document here TradePrices, our database of aggregated and sectoral trade price indices for all countries, computed using unit values given by BACI, the CEPII’s database of international trade at the product-level covering the period 1995-2004. Its rich country dimension allow an international comparison of prices evolutions. We compute “common” Laspeyres and Paasche indices but also “superlative” Fisher and Tornqvist indices, in both chained and fixed-base forms (chained Laspeyres and Paasche are also provided in their geometric form). In a first part, we discuss the characteristics of these different aggregation methods. In particular, we highlight the links between statistical methods and economical assumptions about implicit elasticity of substitution between goods. In a second step we describe the data. An exhaustive sensitivity analysis is done in order to determine the appropriate way to deal with technical difficulties, such as the treatment of measurement errors in bilateral unit values. Finally, this paper provides some stylized facts illustrating the necessity to provide a trade price database allowing international comparison and the usefulness of both aggregated and sectoral trade price indices to study international economics. TradePrices database and SAS programs are freely available online, offering to users the possibility to choose the most accurate index for each particular purpose.

Keywords: International trade, price indices, export unit values

JEL Classification: F12, F15