Tidy IMF WEO - October 2022

Teal Emery

Introduction

This GitHub Repo houses a tidy (long-format) version of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook Database for October 2022. I use this a lot for data analysis and data visualization, and I want to make sure my work is reproducible, so I’m putting it on GitHub. Also, I hope the data or the scripts can be useful for others, especially those working on projects with me.

Someday I’ll clean up & formalize the scripts, but they work well for now.

Elements of the Tidy WEO:

• Standardized Country Names: The country names are standardized using the countrycode R package. The dataset has standardized country names in the country_name column, and ISO3C codes in the iso3c column.

• Analysis-Friendly Subject Names: I added sensible names that are easy to filter and can easily be used in tables + data visualizations. You can see the subject names in the codebook.csv file

• Tidy Long-format: Simplifies data analysis and data visualization, especially if you’re a R Tidyverse zealot, like I am.

Data

The data is available in long-format as an .rds (R data file).

Long-format .csv files aren’t space efficient, so I have it written as a wide-format .csv file. Making it wide-format cuts the file size down from 42.1 MB to 1.5 MB. I make this available for non-R users.

Downloading the Data

if you’re using R, you can copy the code for the function below to download the data.

download_tidy_weo_2022_oct <- function() {
  
  # rds file github url
  github_url <- "https://github.com/t-emery/tidy_imf_weo_2022_oct/raw/master/00_data_processed/imf_weo_2022_oct_by_country_tidy.rds"
  
  github_url |> 
    url() |> 
    #unzips it
    gzcon() |> 
    #reads it
    readRDS()
}

You can run it like this:

download_tidy_weo_2022_oct() |> 
  head()

  country_name iso3c              short_name_unit short_name        short_unit
1  Afghanistan   AFG Real GDP (bn local currency)   Real GDP bn local currency
2  Afghanistan   AFG Real GDP (bn local currency)   Real GDP bn local currency
3  Afghanistan   AFG Real GDP (bn local currency)   Real GDP bn local currency
4  Afghanistan   AFG Real GDP (bn local currency)   Real GDP bn local currency
5  Afghanistan   AFG Real GDP (bn local currency)   Real GDP bn local currency
6  Afghanistan   AFG Real GDP (bn local currency)   Real GDP bn local currency
  category year value weo_vintage
1      GDP 1980    NA  2022 - Oct
2      GDP 1981    NA  2022 - Oct
3      GDP 1982    NA  2022 - Oct
4      GDP 1983    NA  2022 - Oct
5      GDP 1984    NA  2022 - Oct
6      GDP 1985    NA  2022 - Oct

To download the codebook:

download_tidy_weo_2022_oct_codebook <- function() {
  
  # rds file github url
  github_url <- "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/t-emery/tidy_imf_weo_2022_oct/master/00_data_processed/codebook.csv"
  
  github_url |> 
    readr::read_csv()
}

download_tidy_weo_2022_oct_codebook()

# A tibble: 45 × 5
   short_name_unit                         short_name    short…¹ categ…² weo_s…³
   <chr>                                   <chr>         <chr>   <chr>   <chr>  
 1 Real GDP (bn local currency)            Real GDP      bn loc… GDP     NGDP_R 
 2 Real GDP (% change)                     Real GDP      % chan… GDP     NGDP_R…
 3 Nominal GDP (bn local currency)         Nominal GDP   bn loc… GDP     NGDP   
 4 Nominal GDP (bn USD)                    Nominal GDP   bn USD  GDP     NGDPD  
 5 Nominal GDP (bn PPP)                    Nominal GDP   bn PPP  GDP     PPPGDP 
 6 GDP Deflator (index)                    GDP Deflator  index   GDP     NGDP_D 
 7 Real GDP per capita (local currency)    Real GDP per… local … GDP     NGDPRPC
 8 Real GDP per capita (PPP)               Real GDP per… PPP     GDP     NGDPRP…
 9 Nominal GDP per capita (local currency) Nominal GDP … local … GDP     NGDPPC 
10 Nominal GDP per capita (USD)            Nominal GDP … USD     GDP     NGDPDPC
# … with 35 more rows, and abbreviated variable names ¹​short_unit, ²​category,
#   ³​weo_subject_code