Many sources provide overviews of international trade. They show data in varying degrees of detail and many are free. However, if you want to cover the majority of countries, in detail, simultaneously, with authoritative numerical data, then Dialog's TradStatWeb (http://www.tradstat.com) is for you. Claiming to cover 90% of the entire world's trade flows, with data on over 60,000 products, TradStatWeb is a powerful way of dealing with complex questions and gives users direct access. Having used the older TradStat interface, I welcome Dialog's new Web service for trade data. As a single source of trade volumes and prices, Dialog's TradStatWeb is the most comprehensive source of data available, and is now considerably easier to use than the former DOS-based system. The Web interface, with both Guided Search and Expert Search modules, offers many improvements over the previous menu-driven online system. Newer features include: * Better automation of the production of reports * Better creation and access to previously created reports by using drop-down lists * Ability to send standing orders by email to yourself or other users * Custom definition of your own subaccounts and country region groups * Improved searching for Harmonised System codes using product names * An exchange rate system covering a wide range of currencies retrospectively * An extensive set of help pages (a full 51 pages, when printed out) If you have a DataStar password, that's all you need to access TradStatWeb. If not, you can sign up online for either a DataStar password or one that will work only on TradStat. REPORTING COUNTRIES & DATA AVAILABILITY TradStatWeb gets regular updates of trade data from its reporting countries--though inevitably these arrive at different times. A page shows you how recently data is available from each country.
展开▼
