# **II. Data Sources**

# **Trade Data (Values and Quantities of Imports)**

Bilateral data on the quantity and value of Russian imports from all partner countries except Belarus for the years 2001 to 2010 inclusive and for the first half of the year 2011, were acquired from the electronic database of the commercial company Academy-Service.<sup>7</sup> This dataset provides information on the value and quantity of imports at the tariff line level, i.e., the 10-digit level. The quantity data are available in physical units such as kilograms <u>and the value of imports is in US dollars. Since there</u> are more than 11,000 tariff lines and the data are reported by partner country at the tariff line level, the database contains about 450,000 or 500,000 observations per year.<sup>8</sup>

# **Tariff Data**

The source of the data on the tariff rates of the Russian Federation for 2001 to 2010, inclusive, is various editions of the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation on import duties. For 2006 to 2010, it is decree number 718, dated November 27, 2006.<sup>9</sup> For 2001 to 2005, it is decree number 830. These documents are available from www.base.consultant.ru.<sup>10</sup>

> 7 <u>http://www.ftinform.com. Comparison of these data with those provided to us by the Russian Ministry of Economic Development and Trade have confirmed the accuracy of these data. Belarusian</u> imports are not included in the sample, which explains discrepancy between the aggregate import reported in the balance of payments and our data.

8 Seven observations were dropped from the sample as obvious outliers, based on highly implausible unit prices such as a 40 dollars per car, HS code 8703239027, imported from Germany in 2007. 9 We looked at the following editions of decree 718 to track the changes in tariff lines over time: dated by 12.30.2006 for 2006; dated by 12.29.2007 for 2007; dated by 12.19.2008 for 2008; dated by 12.18.2009 for 2009, dated by 04.01.2010 for 2010. For 2011, we used January 1, 2012 for reasons explained in the text. For 2001 to 2005, we took data from editions of decree 830: first, dated 11.30.2001 for 2001; the second, dated 02.06.2003 for 2002 rates; for 2003, 2004 and 2005, we took December 31 of the respective year. Within a year, changes can occur at the beginning as well as in the end of the year, introducing some measurement error. However, this approach is consistent over time and should not introduce biases because the changes are distributed quite uniformly over the course of the year.

10 For a minority of products, the units of measurement of the specific tariffs and the import statistics are not the same in our two data sources. Most prominently, tariff lines within the 4-digit Harmonized System categories 8701-8705 (tractors and motor vehicles) have a specific tariff component defined in euros per cubic meters of the volume of the engine (cm3). The import statistics, however, only report the number of vehicles imported, not the volume of the engine. Taking tariff code 8703 as an example, we resolve this problem as follows.

There are multiple 6 digit tariff lines beginning with 8703, namely 870321, 870322, 870323, 870324. Together they describe the full range of the cylinder capacities. We have that 870321 is for cylinder capacities not exceeding 1 000 cm3; 870322 is for cylinder capacities exceeding 1 000 cm3 but not exceeding 1 500 cm3; 870323 is for cylinder capacities exceeding 1 500 cm3 but not exceeding 3000 5