This project will establish a Web-based archive of international trade data. The archive will be of use to economic policy makers needing both recent data on international trade, and comparable data for past years. While the U.S. federal government now distributes current data through the National Trade Databank (NTDB), this data can be difficult to use and does not provide the comparable data for previous years; thus, the NTDB does not allow policy makers to make decisions based on longer-term trends. Our archive will provide data on both U.S. and worldwide trade, and also on trade barriers, over a wide range of years. In addition to its usefulness for policy, the archive will be of particular help to dissertation writers and other young scholars doing empirical research in international economics. The principal investigators will work in conjunction with a number of other researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER, Cambridge, MA and New York). At the heart of this archive is a comprehensive database of U.S. import and export data. In addition, the archive will include: Historical data, U.S. exports and imports: prices, quantities, and values, quarterly for 1879-1913; values, matched with U.S. production, at ten year intervals from 1869-1947 State-level agricultural exports and imports for the United States Detailed annual export and domestic price data for manufactures from the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, France, Sweden, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore Outward foreign direct investment data for the U.S., Japan, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and some developing countries, as well as inward foreign direct investment data for many countries World trade data, as available from the United Nations and Statistics Canada Trade flows to and from China, computed from several sources Data on congressional voting in the U.S. on trade issues, related to characteristics of the congressional districts Data on U.S. antidumping cases U.S. and worldwide tariff data This data will be useful for addressing a wide range of issues, such as: the impact of international trade on domestic employment and wages; the responsiveness of trade flows to exchange rate fluctuations; how international trade flows change as production moves to lower-wage countries; and how growing exports from newly-industrialized countries has impacted specific industries.
