Are partner-country statistics useful for estimating”missing”trade data?
Author InfoYeats, Alexander J. Abstract Because many developing countries fail to report trade statistics to the United Nations, there has been an interest in using partner-country data to fill these information gaps. The author used partner-country statistics for 30 developing countries to”estimate”actual (concealed) trade data and analyzed the magnitude of the resulting errors. The results indicate that partner-country data are unreliable even for estimating trade in broad aggregate product groups such as foodstuffs, fuels, or manufactures. Moreover, tests show that the reliability of partner-country statistics degenerates sharply as one moves to more finely distinguished trade categories (lower-level SITCs). Equally disturbing, about one-quarter of the partner-country comparisons take the wrong sign. That is, one country’s reported free-on-board (f.o.b.) exports exceed the reported cost-insurance-freight (c.i.f.) value of partners’imports. Aside from product composition, tests show
