This chapter provides an in-depth comparison of a host of aggregate bilateral trade databases which are typically used in quantitative work in international economics. In particular, the chapter documents large differences between the data on the same country pairs and time periods from these different sources. It reveals the most important reasons behind these differences and illustrates that empirical results for the gravity equation as a workhorse model in empirical international economics vary substantially across the various databases, even though the source data come from the same national statistical offices.
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