Price and Quantity Indexes of the Colombian Foreign Trade

Price and quantity indexes of exports and imports are very important tools for the analysis of a country’s trade performance and its impact on the national economy. These indicators are mainly used as input for the study of the terms of trade, external competitiveness, and the effects of changes in international prices on domestic inflation. Given their importance, this paper uses customs statistics to provide a monthly estimation of the chained indexes of prices and quantities of the Colombian foreign trade. The proposed methodology follows the recommendations of international organizations (IMF, CAN, EUROSTAT) to address the problems of aggregation and volatility in the databases. Some of the results obtained are the decomposition of the value of imports and exports into price and quantity effects and the bilateral terms of trade.

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