The Diversification Toolkit: Export Diversification and Quality Databases (IMF 2018)
Last Updated: December 21, 2019
About the databases
Covering 200 economies 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 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 export diversification and quality database was developed by IMF staff under an IMF-DFID research collaboration.
The Export Diversification Database has three main indicators: the Export Diversification Index, the Extensive Margin, and the Intensive Margin. Higher values for the all three indices indicate lower diversification. The Export Quality Database contains export quality measures across different aggregation levels of export products. Higher values for the quality indices indicate higher quality levels.
Download the databases through our IMF DATA website:
