Recent Improvements to the Government Finance Statistics Yearbook Database in Response to Analytical Needs

January 14, 2013

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Format: Chicago

Mike Seiferling. Recent Improvements to the Government Finance Statistics Yearbook Database in Response to Analytical Needs, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2013) accessed October 6, 2024

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

The demand for high quality detailed public finance statistics covering a globally representative sample of countries has increased dramatically during the recent financial crisis. Due to the complexity of public finance statistics, however, such data tend to be either available in oversimplified high level aggregates and lacking in methodological transparency, or, available with a great level of detail and a unified methodological approach yet overly complicated to understand. The IMF’s Government Finance Statistics Yearbook (GFSY) withdata over an almost 40 year period for almost 140 countries is a valuable database but with a complex structure requiring some specialty knowledge that most data users do not have. The IMF's Statistics Department embarked on several initiatives to improve its accessibility. The purpose of this paper is to provide a non-technical overview of the methodology and advantages of the GFSY database and discussion of how the database is improving to better meet the needs of the user community.

Subject: Currencies, Fiscal stance, Government finance statistics, Institutional arrangements for revenue administration

Keywords: Database, ELibrary data homepage, Government, Government data, Government Finance Statistics Manual, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

20
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2013/015
Stock No:

WPIEA2013015
ISBN:

9781475528251
ISSN:

1018-5941

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