The Pacific Basin in World Trade: Part I, Current Price Trade Matrices, 1948-1975

This is the first of a sequence of papers on international flows of merchandise trade among fifteen Pacific Basin countries and between them and eleven regions in the Rest of the World. The basic purpose of this report is to present and document annual data on bilateral flows of exports in current prices among the 26 countries and regions in matrix form for the years 1948 through 1975. A second report will provide export price deflators and trade matrices in constant prices for 1955-1975, and a third will analyze the changing pattern of Pacific Basin trade over the same period. The present report is organized as follows. In Section 2 we justify the concept of a Pacific Basin regional economy and describe the postwar trends in its share of world trade and in its internal trading relationships. Section 3 contains a detailed description of the construction of the annual trade matrices. The matrices themselves are presented in Appendix D. Appendix A lists the countries in each regional grouping, and Appendices B and C document adjustments to the basic International Monetary Fund Directions of Trade (DOT) data for the trade of socialist countries and that of Malaysia and Singapore.