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Data

Value of imported goods as a share of GDP

About this data

Source
Fouquin and Hugot (2016) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 19, 2018
Date range
1827–2014
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Fouquin and Hugot – Two Centuries of Bilateral Trade and Gravity Data: 1827-2014

To calculate country exports (imports) to (from) the rest of the world, the total value of exports (imports) by country, per year, is divided by the country's GDP. Calculations use Fouquin and Hugot (CEPII 2016) national trade data.

The time series 'World' corresponds to the World's total exports (imports) (i.e. the sum of exports (imports) reported by all countries in the dataset).

The total export (import) values of regional income aggregates have been calculated using the World Bank's income groupings. These time series begin in 1970, where the number of countries are more representative. Similarly, total export (import) values by continental grouping begin in 1960.

Germany's time series is comprised of West Germany, and Germany. East Germany has been excluded for the purposes of Germany's calculations. Russia's time series comprises Russia and the USSR.

Retrieved on
March 19, 2018
Retrieved from
http://www.cepii.fr/cepii/en/bdd_modele/presentation.asp?id=32
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Michel Fouquin & Jules Hugot, 2016. "Two Centuries of Bilateral Trade and Gravity Data: 1827-2014," CEPII Working Paper 2016-14, May 2016, CEPII.

To calculate country exports (imports) to (from) the rest of the world, the total value of exports (imports) by country, per year, is divided by the country's GDP. Calculations use Fouquin and Hugot (CEPII 2016) national trade data.

The time series 'World' corresponds to the World's total exports (imports) (i.e. the sum of exports (imports) reported by all countries in the dataset).

The total export (import) values of regional income aggregates have been calculated using the World Bank's income groupings. These time series begin in 1970, where the number of countries are more representative. Similarly, total export (import) values by continental grouping begin in 1960.

Germany's time series is comprised of West Germany, and Germany. East Germany has been excluded for the purposes of Germany's calculations. Russia's time series comprises Russia and the USSR.

Retrieved on
March 19, 2018
Retrieved from
http://www.cepii.fr/cepii/en/bdd_modele/presentation.asp?id=32
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Michel Fouquin & Jules Hugot, 2016. "Two Centuries of Bilateral Trade and Gravity Data: 1827-2014," CEPII Working Paper 2016-14, May 2016, CEPII.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Value of imported goods as a share of GDP”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Fouquin and Hugot. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Fouquin and Hugot (2016) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Fouquin and Hugot (2016) – processed by Our World in Data. “Value of imported goods as a share of GDP” [dataset]. Fouquin and Hugot, “Two Centuries of Bilateral Trade and Gravity Data: 1827-2014” [original data]. Retrieved May 13, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear