UN Trade Analysis & Information System

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's Trade Analysis & Information System, TRAINS, contains information on Trade Control Measures (tariff, para-tariff and non-tariff measures) at tariff line level for 119 countries. Boston College has purchased disaggregated tariff information from UNCTAD's TRAINS database for the years 1990 through 1998, inclusive. We have data for 112 countries for at least one year, counting the European Union as a single country. The Stata data set "coverage" shows the years for which data are available for each country. To access this dataset from within the BC community,

use http://econ.bc.edu/trains/coverage.dta

TRAINS reports tariff data at the six-digit level of the HS product classification; thus, we have tariffs for roughly 5000 "products" for each country. Countries use a finer product classification when reporting tariffs to UNCTAD. Thus, multiple tariff "lines" underlie each 6-digit aggregate. A list of the hierarchy of six-digit classification codes for 1996 is available as a Stata dataset:

use http://econ.bc.edu/trains/hs1996.dta

The data themselves are found in nine separate Stata data sets, named "trains1990" through "trains1998". These data sets contain the following variables:

• the importing country's code and name
• the year of the tariff data
• the product classification used by the country to report its tariffs, either HS 1988 or HS 1994
• the 6-digit HS product code
• the number of product lines within the 6-digit category which are subject to ad valorem tariffs, the number subject to non-ad-valorem tariffs, and the number not subject to tariffs
• the sum of the MFN ad valorem tariffs applied to products within the 6-digit HS category
• the average MFN ad valorem tariff at the 6-digit level
• some information on tariff dispersion within the 6-digit category
• import volume for the 6-digit category (to be used with caution)

The datafiles are accessible in Stata format over the web (within the BC network) via

use http://econ.bc.edu/trains/trainsYYYY.dta

where YYYY is a four-digit year. These files range in size from 8.6 Mb to 29 Mb per year.

Our license limits use of the TRAINS data to people affiliated with Boston College.

The TRAINS data can be difficult to use. Douglas Marcouiller would be glad to help in their interpretation.