Export Diversification and Quality (July 2017)

Covering 198 countries including most low-income countries, the toolkit provides indicators on export product diversification and export product quality from 1962-2014. The measures in this toolkit are calculated based on an updated version of the UN–NBER dataset, which harmonizes COMTRADE bilateral trade flow data at the 4-digit SITC (Rev. 1) level. The UN–NBER dataset combines importer- and exporter-reported data to maximize comprehensiveness while ensuring internal consistency, using the methodology of Asmundson (forthcoming). The export diversification and quality database was developed by IMF staff under a research collaboration between the IMF and the former UK Department for International Development (DFID), which merged with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) on September 2, 2020 to become the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). The team’s working, published, and IMF Board papers on diversification can be found on the project website: https://www.imf.org/external/np/res/dfidimf/.

The toolkit includes indices of diversification across export products which can be found under the heading “Export Diversification.” We have three main indicators. The Theil Index provides an overall measure of export diversification. In addition, we have decomposed the overall export diversification index into extensive and intensive margins of diversification. The Extensive Margin reflects the concentration in the number of products by country, while the Intensive Margin component looks at the concentration in the export volumes across active products. Higher values for the all three indices indicate lower diversification.

The toolkit also contains export quality measures across different aggregation levels of export products, and these can be found under the “Quality Index” heading. The Export Quality Index measures the overall quality level of each country. The other quality indices measure the sectoral quality levels for each country. For example, “Food and Animals” provides a measure of quality for the food and animals sector. The baseline methodology (see Henn et al. (2013)) estimates quality based on unit values and is a modified version of Hallak (2006). To enable cross-product comparisons, all quality estimates are normalized to their 90th percentile in the relevant product-year combination. The resulting quality values typically range between 0 and 1.2. Higher values for the quality indices indicate higher quality levels. Please see the detailed data description under the Methodology section on the Data Mapper webpage.

The data in this toolkit are provided “as is” and “as available,” and every effort is made to ensure, but not guarantee, their timeliness, accuracy, and availability.

More granular data from this database are available at the IMF Data website:

https://data.imf.org/?sk=A093DF7D-E0B8-4913-80E0-A07CF90B44DB.

Export Diversification 3 , 1962 - 2014

Extensive Margin Index
Intensive Margin Index
Export Diversification Index Index

Export Quality Index 11 , 1962 - 2014

Food and live animals Index
Beverages and tobacco Index
Crude materials, inedible, except fuels Index
Mineral fuels, lubricants and related materials Index
Animal and vegetable oils and fats Index
Chemicals Index
Manufact goods classified chiefly by material Index
Machinery and transport equipment Index
Miscellaneous manufactured articles Index
Commodity & transactions not classified accord to kind Index
Export Quality Index Index