Session IIb Asymmetries in Partner Country Data

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STC/2008/057.1
Session IIb Asymmetries in Partner Country Data
Discussant Steven Keuning
CES Conference in Paris, 10-12 June 2008
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Session II B Asymmetries in Partner Country
Data

• 3 Complementary perspectives
• Trade in goods (Ukraine paper)
• Trade in services (UK/US paper)
• Foreign direct investment (Netherlands paper)
• Key issues
• How to improve data quality through more
  intensive international cooperation (asymmetries
  papers)
• How to track the economic impact of rapid
  globalisation (FDI Paper)

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Statistics of foreign trade goods asymmetry of
partner-country data the experience of Ukraine
(Note by the State Statistics of Ukraine)

• Summary
• Asymmetry between data on Ukraines imports from
  the EU-25 and the EU-25 exports to the Ukraine is
  steadily increasing (to almost 30)
• Recently, asymmetries with neighbouring
  EU-countries increased faster
• Important cause could be
• classification of imports by country of origin
  interpreted as the location of the producer
  country (which is not necessarily the origin of
  this transport) and
• classification of exports by country of
  destination interpreted as next, but not
  necessarily ultimate destination of the products
• Need to learn from best practices and (updated)
  international recommendations

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Questions to the authors

• Are the relative asymmetries between the Ukraine
  and the EU as a whole smaller than the unweighed
  average of the relative asymmetries between the
  Ukraine and each of the EU member states?
• Do you expect that the benefits of larger-scale
  investigations into detailed mirror statistics
  would exceed the costs?
• Is there a need for refined international
  guidelines on the recording of the origin and
  destination of goods in transit and of
  re-exported goods?

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Preliminary investigations into asymmetries in
bilateral trade
in services between the USA and the UK (Tom
Orford and John Lowes, ONS, UK, ED Dozier,
BEA,USA)

• Summary
• Intensive joint work on bilateral asymmetries in
  11 categories of trade in services
• Aim to produce and potentially publish a set of
  fully reconciled, supplementary estimates, using
  a number of pragmatic rules of thumb
• Intensive preparatory work, 3-day visit in
  November 2006, progress on reasons for
  asymmetries, work not yet concluded
• Issues resource constraints, confidentiality of
  enterprise data, different types of surveys used
  by UK ONS and US BEA.

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Bilateral asymmetries in trade in services

Both US and UK have larger trade in services and
larger asymmetrieswith the euro area than with
each other
EA
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Questions to the authors

• Did you already produce partial supplementary
  estimates ?
• Can you assess how large a proportion of the
  total resources needed to achieve your aim has
  now been spent?
• Has it been worth the effort, also in view of
  apparently new data sources that are being
  developed?
• Could it be useful and feasible to single out
  intra-company trade in your investigations?
• For which category of services do you consider
  this detective work to be most useful?

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FDI Statistics, the problem or the solution in
measuring globalisation? (Pim Claassen, Gerrit
van den Dool, Netherlands Central Bank)

• Four major challenges in measuring FDI
• Inflation of FDI through use of SPVs, treasury
  centres, etc.
• Distortion of geographical breakdown through
  longer investment chains
• Lack of clarity on the nature of FDI (MA,
  greenfield, restructuring)
• Weakening of relationship between FDI and
  economic activity
• Five methodological improvements foreseen (1.a.
  distinguishing SPVs, 1.b netting, 2. looking
  through SPVs, 3. distinguishing the nature of
  FDI, 4. providing information on the ultimate
  controlling parent)
• Various remaining challenges (SPVs with domestic
  liabilities, global multinationals, linkage
  between FDI statistics and FATS)
• Quality improvement and efficiency gains possible
  through
• Eurogroup Register
• Handbook of Globalisation Indicators
• National specialisation within a European network
  of compilers
• Sharing micro-information

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Questions to the authors

• Which time frame do you foresee for the
  implementation of each of the five methodological
  improvements (e.g. in the EU)?
• Will these methodological improvements suffice to
  meet the challenges (apart from the remaining
  ones that you list)?
• Please elaborate on the measurement of
  globalisation using international input-output
  tables, as you quote in footnote 9 of your paper.
  Do you consider this a promising approach? What
  would be the additional data requirements, if
  any?

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Questions for a general discussion and follow-up
action

• Can we tackle the confidentiality issue that
  severely hinders the required exchange of
  micro-information (at least on very large
  transactions) without damaging the trust of
  respondents?
• Should we aim for a completely different data
  collection approach from the (largest)
  multinationals? If so, what could be the next
  step?
• Are we suggesting a spurious exactness of our
  figures (e.g. by publishing too many digits)?
• What contribution can be expected from the
  envisaged IMF Coordinated Direct Investment
  Survey?
• Is there a need for a non-EU liaison group for
  important EU-initiatives like Eurogroups Register
  and the possible pooling of micro-information on
  FDI?

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Thank you very much for your attention!
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