Institutions and Fuels Trade: a Quantitative Analysis

Regarding the import demand model, the average sample observation has a population of approximately 47 million individuals and imports an amount of non-renewable source equal to 5.00% of the GDP each year, to which applies a tariff equal to 5.35%. It counts on approximately 50 trillions of BOE on proved reserves, while it faces on the market an energy price of around 36.5 U.S. Dollars (at 2013 value) per BOE. It is characterized by a slightly negative institutional quality of Civil Rights and Economic Regulation, while it shows a slightly positive value for Government Quality. The sample mean is quiet close to the true population mean because its standard error is, in general, relatively small (so that mean values offer a good representation of the average population).38 Nevertheless, it is important to point out that the standard deviation assumes high values, meaning that single observations vary greatly among each other (i.e. data are widely spread around the mean).
Looking more in detail at data distribution, most of the variables exhibit positive skewness, which indicates that the distribution is not symmetrical but it is skewed to the left. The opposite is true for InPRICE . Moreover, some of them exhibit kurtosis: Imports and TariffIM have values higher than 3 and hence are characterized by a sharp peak with heavy tails, while InRESERVES and InPRICE have values lower than 3, indicating flat tops. In conclusion, variables do not show normality, with the exception of Civil Rights. The point is made clearer by graphic analysis of frequency distributions as presented in Figure 1.