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The Re-Export Puzzle: How the OECD addresses the largest source of distortion in merchandise trade statistics

7 minute readInternational trade statistics offer a picture of trade flows between countries and play a critical role in shaping economic policy, guiding trade negotiations, and supporting evidence-based research and decision-making. These statistics are reported from two different perspectives: that of the exporter and that of the importer. Users expect the two numbers to match but this is not always the case. Addressing them is essential for achieving a coherent and accurate view of international trade.

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Economic indicators

OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps: Ihr Land im internationalen Vergleich

4 minute readAm 18. September 2025, dem International Equal Pay Day bzw. „Internationalen Tag für gleiches Entgelt“, hat die OECD ein neues Tool vorgestellt, mit dem sie die globalen Anstrengungen zur Beseitigung geschlechtsspezifischer Ungleichheiten unterstützt: das OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps. Dieses Tool ist mehr als eine Datenbank – es ist ein Aufruf zum Handeln, ein Spiegel anhaltender Ungleichheiten und ein Kompass für Reformen. Das OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps liefert international vergleichbare Daten zu allen OECD-Ländern, um eine bessere Beobachtung und Messung der Fortschritte auf dem Weg zur Geschlechtergleichstellung zu ermöglichen.

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Featured

How important is the automotive industry in OECD countries? Insights from supply and use tables

5 minute readSupply and use tables (SUTs) are an integral part of the national accounts. This article aims to highlight the richness contained within SUTs by profiling the automotive industry, which stands out due to its reliance on extensive supply chains, looking at issues such as the relative importance of the automotive industry in countries, the extent to which the industry is driving exports and is dependent on imports, and the impacts of trade and transport margins as well as taxes and subsidies on product prices.

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Featured, Globalisation, Multinationals, New Data

Monitoring multinational enterprises: How the OECD and UNSD are harnessing open data

4 minute readMultinational Enterprises (MNEs) are key actors in the global economy. In 2023, the top 500 MNEs generated over USD 21 trillion in revenues, greater than the  combined GDP of the European Union. To overcome this, the OECD and United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) developed the Multinational Enterprise Information Platform (MEIP). The Platform is updated annually, with the third release, covering the period to 31st December 2023, now available.

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by oecdstatistics
Economic indicators, Featured, Inflation

Does the slowdown in inflation mean that consumers are better off?

7 minute readRecent months brought positive news about declining inflation, with rates finally coming within reach of central banks’ targets and pre-pandemic inflation. This is especially welcome after the surge in inflation rates following the Covid pandemic, supply chain disruptions and start of war in Ukraine, in 2021-22, when in many OECD countries inflation reached figures not seen since the 1980s. However, declining inflation rates do not mean declining prices, only a slowdown in their increase. Average prices of consumer goods and services are now (as of September 2024) about a third higher for an average OECD country than they were in December 2019.

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by oecdstatistics
Education, Labour Market, New Data, Productivity

Measuring labour input: is it about quantity, quality, or both?

4 minute readHuman capital, the stock of knowledge and skills embodied in people, is a key input in economic production. Changes in both the “quantity” and the “quality” of a country’s human capital stock influence economic growth and productivity performance. Traditional measures of labour input in economic growth and productivity analyses, such as total hours worked, focus solely on changes in the quantity of labour input, ignoring changes in the skill composition of the workforce. For example, these measures equate an hour worked by a highly experienced surgeon and an hour worked by a junior retail salesperson, disregarding their vastly different experience and skills.

Firms recognise that workers with different skills and experience are not perfect substitutes by paying them different wages. It is therefore possible to account for differences between workers by weighting their hours worked by their respective shares in total wages. Such measures are often referred to as Composition Adjusted Labour Input (CALI), Labour Services, or Quality Adjusted Labour Input (QALI). CALI measures provide an improved understanding of whether the average “quality” of labour is increasing or decreasing over time.

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by oecdstatistics
Globalisation, Trade

Recent developments in international transport and insurance costs: insights from the OECD-ITIC Database

5 minute readTo understand international trade and set policy direction it is vital to understand the costs associated with transporting and insuring goods across borders. International transport and insurance costs, which correspond to the value of the transport and insurance services performed to deliver the goods from the border of the exporting country to the border of the importing country, have a direct and material impact on trade patterns and on a country’s competitiveness. Despite their importance, accessing quantitative information on these costs has long been a challenge for statisticians and policymakers alike. This article presents the OECD International Transport and Insurance Costs of merchandise trade (ITIC) database (Fiallos, Liberatore, & Cassimon, 2024), which helps to deepen our understanding of these aspects of global trade by providing both reported data and estimates on international transport and insurance costs on over 200 economies by partner and product.

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by oecdstatistics
Environment

Understanding datasets on greenhouse gas emissions

4 minute readReducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) is the key to mitigating climate change. It is essential to have reliable data on human-induced GHG emissions to analyse the trend of historical emissions, develop policies to reduce emissions and track the progress towards climate goals.

There are several datasets for GHG emissions and they serve different objectives. For example, there are “production-based” emissions and “demand-based” emissions datasets. The former cover GHG emissions generated from production activities in a country’s economy, whereas the latter (also called “consumption-based emissions” or “carbon footprints”) capture GHG emissions generated along global production chains to meet the demand of a country.

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by oecdstatistics
New Data, Prices

New purchasing power parities reveal large relative cost of living difference across the OECD in 2022

4 minute readComparing macroeconomic indicators across countries is a tricky issue, as it requires adjustment for differences in currencies and price levels to ensure a like-for-like comparison. Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) are the right tool for this. This is possible because PPPs are calculated based on prices of a common and comprehensive basket of goods and services. As a result, PPPs are the go-to conversion rates to be used when comparing macroeconomic indicators, such as GDP or price levels, across countries.

The latest “flash” PPPs point to large variability across countries for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in PPPs in 2023.

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by oecdstatistics
Government, National Accounts

Tips for reading government debt-to-GDP ratios

5 minute readThis article explores how and why different debt-to-GDP ratios for the same country and period may be correct. While there is only one figure used for GDP, there are usually several official measures of debt in OECD countries. The differences reflect users’ demand for different indicators. There may also be differences in the ‘valuation’ and ‘consolidation’ bases of the debt measures. Individuals and institutions using or quoting debt-to-GDP ratios should be aware of the differences behind the indicators.

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by oecdstatistics
Globalisation, New Data, Trade

Monitoring global trade using data on vessel traffic

4 minute readRising uncertainties and geo-political tensions, together with more complex trade relations have increased the demand for data and tools to monitor global trade in a timely manner. At the same time, advances in Big Data Analytics and access to a huge quantity of alternative data – outside the realm of official statistics – have opened new avenues to monitor trade. These data can help identify bottlenecks and disruptions in real time but need to be cleaned and validated.

New work from the OECD Statistics and Data Directorate proposes a new methodology to identify ports, at a higher level of precision than in past research; builds indicators to monitor port congestion and trends in maritime trade flows; and provides a new Dashboard to get detailed information and better understand those flows.

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by oecdstatistics
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