Standardization of Latin American trade statistics. Sources and methodology for a study on the diversification of export baskets

ANNA CARRERAS-MARÍN; AGUSTINA RAYES; BADIA-MIRO, MARC

Paris

Workshop; Workshop on Classifying Trade Statistics; 2016

Science Po Paris

The study of the Latin American region during the Age of Exports has been a topic widely discussed by historians. However, much of the discussion about trade concentration or diversification has focused on main products or main destinations in each country. This approach has prevented detailed knowledge of the pattern of the exported goods, i.e. the relative share of each of the partners by item. Additionally, this approach has hampered the analysis of potential trade in its extensive terms. In this article we work with the official foreign trade statistics of a sample of seven Latin American countries (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Costa Rica) around 1912 in order to analyse the degree of diversification both by product and by destiny. For comparison reasons, we standardized the records of each country following the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC).