Marginal supply mix with export data

Data and Modelling
1

Hi all,

I’m trying to identify the marginal supply mix for a specific commodity. I can’t find any publicly available data for this commodity related to production volumes, but I could find trade data. Does someone have an opinion on using export (domestic export) data to determine supply mixes, as well as the related limitations?

Thanks!

2

Hi

Using trade data only is challenging because while it gives an indication of where the supplier of the product might be located, it does not tell much about the capacity of this supplier to increase production, so ideally both trade and production data would be needed to make a good marginal mix. Additionally, using only trade information one might disregard domestic production, which might also be part of the marginal mix. However, if you have information on trade (time series) and you use another proxy indicator than volume or other evidence (even qualitative information from interview or reports) to estimate the capacity, I would say this could be a reasonably sound approach. I can recommend the two articles below that might be useful, although not recent. We have done recently a lot of work on using trade data to identify marginal suppliers, where these issues are dealt with in detail and there are flow charts and guidance for making a marginal mix using trade data (with the limitations mentioned above), but all this work is under review in IJLCA and taking long time… I will be able to share as soon as it is published.

Bests

Massimo

Buyle, M., Pizzol, M. & Audenaert, A. Identifying marginal suppliers of construction materials: consistent modeling and sensitivity analysis on a Belgian case. Int J Life Cycle Assess 23, 1624–1640 (2018). Identifying marginal suppliers of construction materials: consistent modeling and sensitivity analysis on a Belgian case | The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment | Springer Nature Link

Pizzol, M., Scotti, M. Identifying marginal supplying countries of wood products via trade network analysis. Int J Life Cycle Assess 22, 1146–1158 (2017). Identifying marginal supplying countries of wood products via trade network analysis | The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment | Springer Nature Link