Valuation of East-South trade data

Trade between the developing countries and Eastern Europe has been less subjected to analytical scrutiny than trade among other regions. This is partly because the share of this trade in world trade is relatively small, but also because economic information and data on this trade are scarce, incomplete and of uncertain reliability. The objective of this article is to place East-South trade in perspective, review the available databases bearing on this trade, and examine the main analytical problems involved in the use of such data. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and should not be attributed to the World Bank. The author would like to thank Bela Balassa, Refik Erzan, Paul Meo, Aziz Tay and Alexander Yeats for helpful comments.