CPB Background Document, 23 February 2018

The CPB World Trade Monitor (WTM) is an instrument for bringing together, aggregating, and summarizing worldwide monthly data on international trade and industrial production. Its purpose is to report monthly developments in trade and production at the earliest possible date, covering a sample of countries as large as possible.

Country coverage is sufficient to identify monthly movements at the global level as well as at that of major economic regions. The CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis publishes the outcomes on its website every month. The text at hand provides a technical description of the system that has been developed at the CPB to compile the WTM.

This publication is an update of the publication published in June and September 2016.