Commodity Terms of Trade: A New Database
IMF Working Papers, January 24, 2019
Source details
- Canonical URL
- Commodity Terms of Trade: A New Database
Other formats
Bibliographic details
- Authors: Bertrand Gruss, Suhaib Kebhaj
- Published: January 24, 2019
- Series: IMF Working Papers
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781484393857.001
Overview and purpose
- Presents a comprehensive database of country-specific commodity price indices for 182 economies covering the period 1962-2018.
- Purpose: to construct commodity terms-of-trade indices that proxy windfall gains and losses of income associated with changes in world prices and to provide additional country-specific series for analysis.
Data coverage and construction
- Country coverage: 182 economies.
- Time span: 1962-2018.
- Commodity coverage: change in the international price of up to 45 individual commodities per country.
- Weighting approaches:
- Fixed weights: based on average trade flows over several decades.
- Time-varying weights: account for time variation in the mix of commodities traded and the overall importance of commodities in economic activity.
- Additional series provided: commodity export price indices and commodity import price indices.
- Weighting uses commodity-level trade data to combine commodity price changes into country-specific indices.
Indices and measures
- Primary index: commodity terms-of-trade index (proxy for windfall income gains and losses from world price changes).
- Complementary indices: commodity export price index; commodity import price index.
- Both fixed-weight and time-varying-weight indices are available to support alternative empirical strategies.
Analytical focus and applications
- Discusses the dynamics of commodity terms of trade across country groups.
- Examines the influence of commodity terms of trade on key macroeconomic aggregates.
- Suitable for cross-country empirical research on commodity price shocks, trade balance effects, and income volatility linked to world commodity prices.
Content in this bundle
- Commodity Terms of Trade: A New Database, WP/19/21, January 2019