File Format
The database is distributed as a comma-separated file, ITPD_E_RXX.csv, where XX is the release number. Therefore, the initial release file is called ITPD_E_R01.csv. The columns in the database are described in the table below. The ISO 3-letter country codes and year can be used to merge the ITP database with the USITC’s Dynamic Gravity Dataset as well as other datasets that use the standard ISO codes.1
Trade values are expressed in millions of current United States dollars. Trade is international when exporter and import countries are different. Trade is domestic when the importer and exporter are the same country. As explained in Construction, flag_mirror is equal to 1 for observations that are obtained from the mirror trade data. The variable flag_zero shows whether the current observation contains zero or positive trade and, in case of zero, the origin of the zero. If the current observation contains positive trade, then flag_zero is equal to ‘p’ (“positive”). If the current observation had a zero in the original raw data then flag_zero is equal to ‘r’ (“reported”). If the current observation is filled in with a zero when the dataset is balanced (see Final Procedures), then flag_zero is equal to ‘u’ (“unknown”).
| Column name | Column description |
|---|---|
| exporter_iso3 | ISO 3-letter alpha code of the exporter |
| exporter_name | Name of the exporter |
| importer_iso3 | ISO 3-letter alpha code of the importer |
| importer_name | Name of the importer |
| year | Year |
| industry_id | ITPD industry code |
| industry_descr | ITPD industry description |
| broad_sector | Broad sector |
| trade | Trade flows in million of current US dollars |
| flag_mirror | Flag indicator, 1 if trade mirror value is used |
| flag_zero | Flag indicator: |
| - `p' if positive trade | |
| - `r' if the raw data contained zero | |
| - `u' missing (unknown, assigned zero) |
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Note that ITPD-E uses a constant country code for Romania, ROU, while the DGD version 1.0 uses historically-accurate country codes, which means it denotes Romania by ROM in 2000-2001 and ROU in 2002 and later. Thus, the only adjustment that needs to be made when merging ITPD-E with DGD is to change all instances of ROM to ROU in DGD. ↩