World Trade Flows Database

The bilateral values of trade between countries of the world, organized according to a modified 4-digit SITC basis, are available from World Trade Database (WTDB). This database is developed from trade data initially reported to the United Nations. The WTDB has been purchased by the National Bureau of Economic Research on a corporate license, which allows distribution to other secondary users, but prohibits further redistribution.


Concordance between the WTDB and the BEA Classification


Concordance between the Country names and codes


The WT_BILAT data are available in Stata binary format: wt_bilat.dta.gz (gzipped). You should use set mem 100m when accessing these data. Country names and relevant codes can be found in country.dta.gz (gzipped).

Contains data from wt_bilat.dta
  obs:     2,691,446
 vars:             5                          18 Mar 2002 19:05
 size:    48,446,028 (90.8% of memory free)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              storage  display     value
variable name   type   format      label      variable label
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
impnr           float  %9.0g
bea             byte   %9.0g
expnr           float  %9.0g
trvol           float  %9.0g
year            byte   %9.0g
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by:   
. summ

    Variable |     Obs        Mean   Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+-----------------------------------------------------
       impnr | 2.7e+06    403605.6   163513.5     117100     999999
         bea | 2.5e+06    17.94631   9.855963          1         34
       expnr | 2.7e+06      457272   134243.7     117100     725980
       trvol | 2.7e+06    21457.25   231234.2          5   4.90e+07
        year | 2.7e+06    89.05156   5.193992         80         97          

The WTDB data are available in Stata binary format: wtdb1.dta.gz (gzipped). You should use set mem 300m when accessing these data. Country names and relevant codes can be found in country.dta.gz (gzipped).

Contains data from wtdb1.dta
  obs:    12,002,871
 vars:             5                          18 Mar 2002 19:00
 size:   252,060,291 (51.9% of memory free)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              storage  display     value
variable name   type   format      label      variable label
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
impnr           float  %9.0g
sitc            str4   %9s
expnr           float  %9.0g
trvol           float  %9.0g
year            byte   %9.0g
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by:                                                                     

    Variable |     Obs        Mean   Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+-----------------------------------------------------
       impnr | 1.2e+07    423009.1   157132.4     117100     999999
        sitc |       0
       expnr | 1.2e+07    468726.6     126321     117100     725980
       trvol | 1.2e+07    4811.435   70478.78          5   2.78e+07
        year | 1.2e+07     89.1687   5.203469         80         97

 

Technical details:

The files WTDBYR_1.ASC, WTDBYR_2.ASC, and WTDBYR_3.ASC contain the WTDB data, where YR is a 2-digit number in the range 80,81,...,97. Each year of data is organized into three files, with _1, _2, _3, appended onto the file names, so that each file is not too large. The files appended with _1 contain all the SITC commodities beginning with 0,1,2, or 3; the files appended with _2 contain all the SITC commodities beginning with 4,5,or 6; and the files appended with _3 contain all the SITC commodities beginning with 7,8, or 9.

Record Layout for WTDB*.ASC:

columns 1-6      -    Importing country code (6-digit; see COUNTRY.HTML)
columns 8-11     -    SITC, Revision 2 code (see BEA.HTML)
columns 13-18    -    Exporting country code (see COUNTRY.HTML)
columns 20-27    -    Value of trade (thousands of U.S. dollars)
Special considerations:

Note that 4-digit codes ending in "A" are an aggregate of all the 4-digit categories within that 3-digit code, while 4-digit codes ending in "X" are an incomplete collection of 4-digit categories within that 3-digit code.

Related Files:

The total trade (over all SITC commodities) between each pair of countries in each year has been computed by aggregating the trade values in WTDB*.ASC, and is contained in the file WT_BILAT.ASC, which is organized as follows:

Record Layout for WT_BILAT.ASC:

columns 1-6      -   Importing country code (6-digit; see COUNTRY.HTML)
columns 7-8      -   BEA code (see BEA.HTML)
columns 9-13     -   Exporting country code (see COUNTRY.HTML)
columns 15-24    -   Value of trade (thousands of U.S. dollars)
columns 26-27    -   Year

Data Access:

Due to licensing restrictions these data are available on the web to members of the Boston College community only.
Installed from wtdb on econ.bc.edu 20 March 2002