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

21 Pages Posted: 22 Feb 2013

See all articles by Mike Seiferling

Mike Seiferling

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE)

Date Written: January 2013

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Databases, Government Finance Statistics Yearbook, Government finance statistics, Public finance

JEL Classification: E50

Suggested Citation

Seiferling, Mike, Recent Improvements to the Government Finance Statistics Yearbook Database in Response to Analytical Needs (January 2013). IMF Working Paper No. 13/15, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2222479

Mike Seiferling (Contact Author)

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

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