Instructions:

Purpose of your research:

Your research is to determine if the value of Qatar's import of food from other GCC countries (KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman) depends on Qatar's GDP, the GDP of the trading partners, and the distance between Qatar and each of the trading partners. In summary, you will estimate a Gravity Model of Trade for Qatar's food trade with other GCC countries.

Tasks:

1. Use the United Nation's Comtrade database (http://comtrade.un.org/) to download Qatar's annual food imports from GCC member countries from 2000 to 2014. Use the BEC classification and select option 1 for "food and beverages".

2. You will be able to download GDP values for all countries from the World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org/).

3. You will collect data on road distance between Qatar (Doha) and capital cities in GCC member countries from the web. Useful sources include http://geobytes.com/CityDistanceTool/.

4. You will estimate a multiple regression equation, with value of food imports as dependent variable, and (i) GDP of Qatar, (ii) GDP of other GCC member countries and (iii) distance between Qatar and other GCC countries as independent variables.

5. a. Present your original output as is.

b. Reorganize and present your parameter estimates in a Table format.

c. Explain your results in not more than one(1) page.

d. Attach your data to your report.