گسترش اتحادیه اروپا و تفاوت کالاهای جدید در تجارت اتریش EU Enlargement and the New Goods Margin in Austrian Trade: Comment

1 Replication of Dalton’s (2017) Results Very briefly, the basics of the KR methodology are the following. Bilateral trade flow values are studied by good. Trade flows will be reported according to some product classification, so a good will be a code of the product classification at its maximum level of disaggregation. The goods are ordered by their traded value at the beginning of the study period. To avoid dependence on the choice of the base year, the traded value is averaged over 3 years. Subsequently, the ordered products are cumulated into 10 bins, each representing 10% of the total value of exports from country m to country n in the base year. These 10 sets of goods do not change throughout the sample period. The key to the KR methodology is to observe the evolution and final level of the trade share of the first bin, i.e. the set of least traded goods. This is the new goods margin, comprising both goods with zero trade value and goods with a small, but positive trade value. The least traded goods set comprises the vast majority of goods (codes) of the product classification. The ordering of goods means that it successively takes fewer goods to fill a bin with 10% of the traded value. These subsequent bins contain goods with a significant volume of trade in the base year and can be understood as the intensive margin of trade, although KR do not pay them much attention. Dalton (2017) applies the KR methodology to the trade between Austria and the ten new entrants to the EU in 2004. He uses Eurostat’s Comext data (see Eurostat 2016). Comext provides trade data at the 8-digit Combined Nomenclature (CN) level, a European product classification based on the international 6-digit Harmonized System (HS). The 8-digit CN classification cannot be used due to its continuous and numerous changes, so the 6-digit HS, used by Dalton, is arguably the best choice. The HS product classification comprises approximately 5000 categories at the 6-digit level. The sample period is 1999–2009, therefore goods are ordered according to their average trade over 1999–2001, but the goods that comprise each of the 10 bins are defined according to 1999 data. Dalton first analyses exports flows from Austria to the ten EU entrants and then repeats the analysis with imports flows to Austria. He pays special attention to four of its border countries, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia.