Big data became a hot topic following the release of the film Moneyball, which starred Brad Pitt. Based on a true story, it recounts how massive databases enabled a baseball team to climb from the bottom rungs of the league ladder to the top simply by scrutinizing statistics on the optimal performance of each of its players and devising a strategy for each match based on these … [Read more...] about Big Data and Trade: Tell Me How You Connect and I’ll Tell You What You Buy
Regional Integration
Where to get trade and market access data for Latin America and the Caribbean?
Last September we held a live webinar (in Spanish) to present the INTrade website. The presentation focused on the visualization tools of the system, and showed the basic queries that give access to the specific data that may be of use to whoever seeks to learn more about trade flows and the barriers and opportunities in regional trade. If you missed the webinar, you can watch … [Read more...] about Where to get trade and market access data for Latin America and the Caribbean?
Brazil: Why Is Opening Up So Hard to Do?
When you think about trade policy in Brazil, the first question that comes to mind is “Why is the country taking so long to open up its economy? Why it such a laggard?” After all, Brazil still has one of the highest import tariffs in the world, very few trade agreements to speak off, and its trade liberalization—one of the last to take off in the region (if not in the … [Read more...] about Brazil: Why Is Opening Up So Hard to Do?
Innovation and export diversification: how to renew the regional agenda with China
In 1976, each Chinese citizen was earning US$ 160 a year on average. Forty years later the same annual income is US$ 4,000: it multiplied itself by 25. The question for Latin America is immediate: how did they do it? Other remarkable details of China's development: migration from the countryside to cities led to build 100 cities with capacity to accommodate at least one million … [Read more...] about Innovation and export diversification: how to renew the regional agenda with China
How can we understand the complexity of trade data?
These days, the amount of data available about anything, anywhere, is growing much faster than our ability to process and really understand it. This is true in many fields, but especially in matters of international trade. Statistics on trade flows are available in over 5,000 product categories for all countries, and even more detail for many. Tariff rates, non-tariff barriers … [Read more...] about How can we understand the complexity of trade data?