<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>U.S. import and export price indexes replaced unit value indexes forty years ago, given quality concerns of mismeasurement due to unit value bias. The administrative trade data underlying the unit values have greatly improved since that time. The transaction records are now more detailed, available electronically, and compiled monthly with little delay. The data are used by academic researchers to calculate price measures, and unit value indexes based on trade data are used by other national statistical offices (NSOs). The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is now evaluating whether replacing price indexes with unit value indexes for homogeneous products calculated from administrative trade data could expand the number of published official import and export price indexes. Using export transactions, the research calculates detailed unit value indexes from 200 + million trade records from 2012–2017 for 123 export product categories. Results show that 27 of the 123 unit value indexes are homogeneous and closely comparable to published official price indexes. This article presents the concepts and methods considered to calculate and evaluate the unit value indexes and to select the product categories that are homogeneous. Compared to official price indexes, export unit value indexes for the 27 5-digit BEA (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis) end-use product categories would deflate real exports of these goods by 13 percentage points less over the period. Incorporating these 27 indexes into the top-level XPI would increase the value of real exports of all merchandise goods by 2.6 percentage points at the end of 2017.</p>
</abstract>

U.S. import and export price indexes replaced unit value indexes forty years ago, given quality concerns of mismeasurement due to unit value bias. The administrative trade data underlying the unit values have greatly improved since that time. The transaction records are now more detailed, available electronically, and compiled monthly with little delay. The data are used by academic researchers to calculate price measures, and unit value indexes based on trade data are used by other national statistical offices (NSOs). The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is now evaluating whether replacing price indexes with unit value indexes for homogeneous products calculated from administrative trade data could expand the number of published official import and export price indexes. Using export transactions, the research calculates detailed unit value indexes from 200 + million trade records from 2012–2017 for 123 export product categories. Results show that 27 of the 123 unit value indexes are homogeneous and closely comparable to published official price indexes. This article presents the concepts and methods considered to calculate and evaluate the unit value indexes and to select the product categories that are homogeneous. Compared to official price indexes, export unit value indexes for the 27 5-digit BEA (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis) end-use product categories would deflate real exports of these goods by 13 percentage points less over the period. Incorporating these 27 indexes into the top-level XPI would increase the value of real exports of all merchandise goods by 2.6 percentage points at the end of 2017.

Unit Value Indexes for Exports – New Developments Using Administrative Trade Data

Journal of Official Statistics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

U.S. import and export price indexes replaced unit value indexes forty years ago, given quality concerns of mismeasurement due to unit value bias. The...

Unit Value Indexes for Exports – New Developments Using Administrative Trade Data

Published Online: Mar 29, 2022

Page range: 83 - 106

Received: May 01, 2020

Accepted: May 01, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2022-0005

Keywords
Unit values, trade, large data sets

© 2022 Don Fast et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Unit Value Indexes for Exports – New Developments Using Administrative Trade Data

Published Online: Mar 29, 2022

Page range: 83 - 106

Received: May 01, 2020

Accepted: May 01, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2022-0005

KeywordsUnit values, trade, large data sets

© 2022 Don Fast et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Unit values, trade, large data sets