German foreign trade in the long run. Development of a data set in SITC standard ("GerTrade").

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Jan-Otmar Hesse; Dr. Birgit Settekorn; Professor Dr. Nikolaus Wolf
• Subject Area: Economic and Social History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 540024905

Today, Germany is one of the most internationally integrated economies in the world. This intensive integration into the world economy has grown historically, from the "first wave of globalisation" before the First World War, the protectionist interwar period, to the "hyperglobalisation" of recent decades. However, the exact way in which this interconnectedness took place, e.g. which industries were the driving forces, has not been researched very well until now. This is partly due to the fact that the data on German foreign trade has not yet been prepared in a standardised form and could therefore rarely be used for research that examines long-term developments. In the long-term project, the available historical trade data will now be structured for the first time for the period from 1880 to the present using the Standard International Trade Classification-scheme of the United Nations (SITC), which is commonly used in international research. The data will be made available for international research in a publicly accessible database via GENESIS, the website of Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, and secured for the long term. Available trade statistics will have to be first digitised, the flows of goods reclassified, and compiled as trade volumes and values for the German territory. In the process, the official data will be critically evaluated on the basis of the current state of research and documented in a comprehensible manner for each individual figure on the basis of the FAIR principles. The database created by the long-term project will for the first time provide systematic empirical knowledge on the long-term change of Germany’s foreign trade structure over the last 150 years. By linking trade with input-output tables, the data base will support examinations of industrial relocation and sourcing activities over longer time-periods and for each individual trading partner. Finally, the database will create a completely new field for international comparative research in close cooperation with international partners. Not only economic history research, but economic research as a whole will benefit quite considerably from the data sets.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants