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Sunday, January 21, 2018
I believe transparency is an important goal for every branch of knowledge. The goal of every scientist and researcher should be to shine light onto previously dark and unknown phenomena. The universe is complex and the goal of research is to make order out of it.
Econfactbook.org is an economic data website that attempts to bring greater transparency to the world economy. This website was launched in 2015 and the format was originally proposed in 2013 as a sister project for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Macroeconomic data websites like World Bank Indicators and FRED have a large amount of economic statistics, but I believe they could do a better job at illustrating an economy in a concise, readable format. The format of Econ Factbook is designed to eliminate excess statistics and only display the structure of an economy. By focusing on the structure, I believe it can help people better understand an economy.
The format of Econ Factbook is based on the circular flow model (diagram below). The format has a section for each of the five main economic sectors: households, companies, government, banks and the central bank. Each section has a few statistics to illustrate the condition of that sector. In addition to these five sections, the format has a section for employment, industries and international accounts.
What can Econ Factbook be used for? I believe it would be difficult to analyze an intricate economic issue with this website. Instead, I think this question can be best answered by analogy with a globe. Nobody says a globe is useless due to its lack of direct practicality. It's meant to be an educational tool to help people to better understand our home planet. I believe that the same idea applies to Econ Factbook.
Econ Factbook currently has a page for all 193 UN member countries. I hope that someday every city and state in the world could also have their own page using this format. Presently, economic data about localities is difficult to find on the internet and I believe centralizing this data in a clear format would be useful.
I will conclude this post with a list statistics to show the complete format.
Basic statistics
Population
GDP
GDP per capita
GDP growth rate
Regions
Table of largest regions ranked by GDP along with population, GDP per capita and GDP growth rate
Industries
Table of GDP by industry
Employment
Unemployment rate
Table of employment by industry
Companies
Table of the largest companies ranked by revenue along with their profit and assets
Households
Total household assets
Total household debt
Household wealth per adult
Gini coefficient (inequality indicator)
Government
Central government total revenue and expenditure
Central government total debt
Central government 10 year bond rate
State and local government revenue and expenditure
State and local government debt
List of public funds and assets
Personal income tax rates and thresholds
Corporate tax rate
Table of central government revenue by source
Table of central government expenditure by source
Central bank
Money supply (M0)
Benchmark interest rate
Total reserves
Exchange rate
Inflation rate
Banks
Table of the largest banks ranked by assets along with their revenue and profits
International accounts
Exports
Imports
Foreign direct investment inflow
Foreign direct investment outflow
Foreign aid inflow
Foreign aid outflow
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