Bill of lading data in international trade research with an application to the COVID-19 pandemic

We evaluate high-frequency bill of lading data for international trade research. These data offer some advantages over both other publicly accessible trade data and confidential datasets, but they also have drawbacks. We analyze three aspects of trade during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we show how the high-frequency data capture the within-month collapse of trade between the United States and India that are not observable in official monthly data. Second, we demonstrate how U.S. buyers shifted their purchases across suppliers over time during the recovery. And third, we show how the data can measure vessel delivery bottlenecks in near real time.