Replication package for Geographic Disadvantage and the Composition of Trade

<p>This folder contains all the required information to replicate all tables in the paper titled "Geographic Disadvantage and the Composition of Trade" by Russell Hillberry and Manuel I. Jimenez.</p>

<p>The dataset contains international trade flow data at the combination of country/region and HS6-digit product for a sample of 205 regions and 5,044 HS6-digit product codes in 2017. The source is CEPII (2024). The data is laid out in two separate databases. One database includes only export flow data, and the other, all import flow data. Both databases also include supplementary variables that are identical except for the market access variables we construct below.</p>

<p>Each database includes two dummy variables denoting whether or not a country is landlocked or a small island, respectively. The landlocked dummy is sourced from CEPII (2024), while the island dummy takes a value of 1 when a country is surrounded by water, has no land borders, and has a GDP of less than US$200 billion, and zero otherwise. The databases also contain data on other country characteristics. Countries’ per capita income and population in 2015 are taken from CEPII (2024), with missing observations replaced with data from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations or selected national statistical agencies. U.S. consumer price index from BLS (2024) is also used to deflate countries’ per capita income and express it in 2017 dollars. Additionally, each database includes a dummy variable reporting the membership status in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Likewise, it includes a regions’ market access measures, calculated in a manner similar to that proposed in Redding and Venables (2004). The export database contains regions seller market access variables; the import database contains regions’ buyer market access variables.</p>

<p>Each database also includes four product characteristic variables, three characteristics related to transportation and one related to products’ production line position. One transport characteristic denotes the 2015 value share of the products’ U.S. imports (ex Canada and Mexico) that is moved by air, another the 2015 share arriving in a container, and third the products’ 2015 weight-to-value ratio, expressed in 2017 dollars using the U.S. consumer price index from BLS (2024). All these variables are calculated using U.S. import data sourced from the U.S. Census. The production line position variable is a dummy variable that indicates whether the product is a final good or an upstream input. This variable takes the value of 1 – indicating that a HS6-digit product is a final good – when the upstreamness measure of Antràs et al. (2012) is less than or equal to 1.3, and zero otherwise.</p>

<p>This dataset also includes the code and data used to estimate the market access measures. The database used as inputs into this exercise are a sample of the International Trade and Production Database for Estimation (ITPD-E) Release 3 (Borchert et al., 2021; Larch et al., 2025). The included sample excludes services trade flows and only considers trade flows among countries in the CEPII (2024) database for 2015. The sample also includes the bilateral distance between every pair of countries and an adjacency dummy variable that takes the value of 1 when two countries share borders, and zero otherwise. The source of these variables is CEPII (2024). The database also includes a “Home” dummy variable takes the value of 1 for the ITPD-E domestic flows (imputed from production) in each country, and zero otherwise.</p>

<p>The dataset is in .dta format, and the provided code files are in .do format. All files can be opened in Stata.</p>

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<p>References</p>

<p>Antràs, P., D. Chor, T. Fally, and R. Hillberry (2012). Measuring the Upstreamness of Production and Trade Flows. American Economic Review 102(3), 412–416. American Economic Association.</p>

<p>Borchert, I., M. Larch, S. Shikher, and Y. V. Yotov (2021). The International Trade and Production Database for Estimation (ITPD-E). International Economics 166, 140–166.</p>

<p>BLS. (2024). Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI‑U). U.S. Department of Labor. Available from <a href="https://www.bls.gov/cpi/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">https://www.bls.gov/cpi/</a> accessed in December, 2024.</p>

<p style="text-align:justify; margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span new="" roman="" style="font-family:" times="">CEPII (2024). BACI: International Trade Database at the Product-Level at HS2002. Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales. Available from </span></span></span><a href="https://tinyurl.com/ycpycu9k" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span new="" roman="" style="font-family:" times="">https://tinyurl.com/ycpycu9k</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span new="" roman="" style="font-family:" times=""> accessed in February, 2024.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p>

<p>International Monetary Fund. (2024). World Economic Outlook Database. Available from <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD</a> accessed in March, 2024.</p>

<p>Larch, M., S. Shikher, and Y. Yotov (2025). The International Trade and Production Database for Estimation-Release 3 (ITPD-E-R03). USITC Working Paper 2025–06–A.</p>

<p>Redding, S. and A. J. Venables (2004). Economic Geography and International Inequality. Journal of International Economics 62 (1), 53–82.</p>

<p>St Helena Government. (2023). Statistical Bulletin 5, 2023: Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Available from <a href="https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/statistical-bulletin-5-2023-gross-domestic-product-gdp/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/statistical-bulletin-5-2023-gross-domestic-product-gdp/</a> accessed in December, 2025.</p>

<p>Statistics Netherlands. (2025). Caribbean Netherlands; gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Available from <a href="https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/figures/detail/85251ENG" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/figures/detail/85251ENG</a> accessed in December, 2025.</p>

<p>United Nations. (2024). UN Data Portal. United Nations Data. Available from <a href="https://data.un.org/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">https://data.un.org/</a> accessed in March, 2024.</p>

<p>U.S. Census Bureau (2018). U.S. Imports Merchandise Trade Flows. Data files available from Peter Schott’s web page <a href="https://sompks4.github.io/sub_data.html" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">https://sompks4.github.io/sub_data.html</a> accessed in September and October, 2018</p>

<p>World Bank. (2014). World Development Indicators. Available from <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">https://data.worldbank.org/indicator</a> accessed in March, 2024.</p>