Foreign affiliate sales and the measurement of trade in both goods and services

Abstract

There is an incompatibility between measures of trade in goods and services. The measures of goods trade reflecting GATT are restricted to trade that crosses borders. Service trade, however, under GATS includes both cross-border delivery and foreign affiliate sales within borders. We propose that for comparability the trade component of foreign affiliate sales in goods should be included in goods trade or affiliate sales should be removed from the service trade data. We make modifications to reported goods and services trade for specific countries by using data on affiliate sales to produce more consistently measured cross country estimates of trade flows.