The BBVA Foundation and the Ivie, like many institutions and researchers, are interested in understanding the changes that have occurred in international economic relations, particularly as a result of globalization. In response to this issue, and in the same line as other joint projects undertaken by both institutions, an ambitious line of research is being developed on the measurement of international economic integration from the trade and financial perspective. As a key part of this research, new data banks have been built with indicators that measure international integration and its various components. The INTEGRA database includes Trade Integration Indicators.
This research project takes as reference the economic theory of international trade and incorporates the latest trends from the analysis of integration processes based on network analysis, the benchmark of geographic neutrality, gravity models and differences in specialization.
The INTEGRA database contains three different types of indicators - degree of openness, connection and integration - which have been developed with a broad level of geographic and temporal disaggregation. The database covers a total of 85 countries (representing 97% of worldwide GDP in 2007) and spans the period 1985-2007.
The database offers three types of series of indicators: indicators of total trade in goods; indicators of distance corrected between countries, and indicators disaggregated by industries, as classified by ISIC-3 (Revision 2). There is also a distinction between both directions of trade flows: exports and imports.
The presentation of the database is structured in three sections:
This research was directed by Francisco Pérez García, Ivie Research Director and Professor at the Universidad de Valencia and developed by Ivie researchers and technicians: Rodrigo Aragón, Iván Arribas, Pilar Chorén, Abel Fernández and Emili Tortosa.