Contains a periodic update of the proportion of world trade (imports and exports) for each country for each year. Since the denominator employed is simply a summation of imports and exports for all independent nations included in the archives it falls somewhat short of being a total summation of world trade. It may be assumed, however, that the proportion contributed by non-independent territories for most years is relatively small. As in the case of the revenue and expenditure data, conversion to U.S. dollar equivalents involves a certain degree of risk as regards the introduction of both random and systematic error, but without such conversion the data would be largely worthless for comparative purposes.

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