[open-economics] Financial Comparisons

Sat Jun 8 12:00:43 UTC 2013

Hi Tryggvi,

regarding how to do those index adjustments you were talking about, here's
a simple example of an explanation:

http://people.duke.edu/~rnau/411infla.htm

Just look at the illustrating spreadsheet, it is quite easy to understand I
think. It also shows how to change the base year of the index, which could
be quite important if you are going to combine many different datasets in
the end. For example, if you combine two time series X and Y,

X: from date 1 thru date 100
Y: from date 80 thru date 300

you must choose a base date for both series in the overlapping region
80-100. This is all quite common sense but very easy to mess up.

I looked at your data package, it's great. Just to make sure, do you know
FRED?
http://research.stlouisfed.org/

I think there's a ton of other useful data you could package up in this way
and I think it would be a great service. I started my own modest attempt at
doing so (after I googled "unemployment rates by US state over time" for
the 100th time) and I collect the datasets here:

https://github.com/floswald/Rdata

It stores everything as R data but might as well be csv.

other data to package up could be Robert Shiller's house price and stock
market data:

http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm

and yes, the entire Reinhardt and Rogoff suite (not only inflation but all
the other stuff as well - after the recent debacle I should be surprised if
they wouldn't be more than happy to make the data open). In fact, now that
government datastores are picking up speed (and "official data" like
inflation and unemployment are easier accessible via data.gov and
data.gov.uk and the like) I think there would be a very big value in trying
to get individual reseacher's data out there.

I may be getting ahead of myself here - not sure what your plan is. Anyway
let's talk more if you think there's some scope here.
Cheers
flo

On 8 June 2013 12:00, <open-economics-request at lists.okfn.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: open-economics Digest, Vol 30, Issue 3 (Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson)
>    2. Re: Financial comparisons (Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson)
>    3. Re: open-economics Digest, Vol 30, Issue 4 (Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:59:17 +0000
> From: Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson <tryggvi.bjorgvinsson at okfn.org>
> Subject: Re: [open-economics] open-economics Digest, Vol 30, Issue 3
> To: open-economics at lists.okfn.org
> Message-ID: <51B1F545.6000203 at okfn.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hi Ulrich,
>
> On f?s 7.j?n 2013 09:42, Ulrich Atz wrote:
> > Tryggvi, apologies for potentially missing something, but I'd like to
> help.
>
> That's great. I appreciate all the help I can get so that I can
> implement it correctly in OpenSpending.
>
> > Can you share the data? I have an extensive background in econometrics.
>
> Good to hear.
>
> Currently I'm using the data from the World Bank:
> http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL
>
> I've taken that dataset and created a Data Package (which I'll use in
> OpenSpending). The Data Package is available on data.okfn.org:
> http://data.okfn.org/data/cpi/
>
> I've also taken a look at the data from the Penn World Tables (Guo Xu
> pointed me to that dataset). I haven't added that to the data package
> (it adds some years and is measured differently but I'm unsure about the
> license on the data).
>
> I haven't looked at the data Florian Oswald pointed me to, but I'm about
> to take a look.
>
> --
>
> Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson
>
> Technical Lead, OpenSpending
>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org>
>
> /Empowering through Open Knowledge/
>
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> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:19:26 +0000
> From: Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson <tryggvi.bjorgvinsson at okfn.org>
> Subject: Re: [open-economics] Financial comparisons
> To: Velichka Dimitrova <velichka.dimitrova at okfn.org>
> Cc: "open-economics at lists.okfn.org" <open-economics at lists.okfn.org>
> Message-ID: <51B1F9FE.4010509 at okfn.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hi Velichka!
>
> On f?s 7.j?n 2013 10:01, Velichka Dimitrova wrote:
> > I noticed there might be a confusion in terminology that you might want
> to
> > avoid:
>
> I'm probably messing everything up regarding terminology so thank you
> for correcting me :)
>
> > "Current prices" means always the price of the designated year or no
> change
> > or nominal values
>
> Hmm... I don't know what you mean by "no change".
> My understanding is that nominal value is dependent on years and so I
> can say "the nominal price for 2007" and mean: "What I pay if I were
> using the money in 2007".
>
> So I should use "current price" to denote the value of the amount as it
> is today? ...and that's equivalent to "nominal value"?
>
> > "Constant prices" means when you have chosen a base year - e.g. for
> > deflating GDP the Penn World Table uses 2005 as the base year, i.e. all
> the
> > data is expressed in terms of 2005
>
> Ah... yes. This is what I'm searching for and what I mean by "real
> value" (or almost).
>
> So with this new terminology I can probably phrase my question better:
>
> What I want to do in OpenSpending is to store the amount as constant
> price so I can make comparisons based on the constant price, and then
> compute the current price when presenting the amounts. With the data I
> have I have these two questions:
>
> 1. How do I compute the constant price when I know the CPI for the year
> I'm converting
> 2. What do I do when I want to compute the current price and I don't
> know the current CPI?
>
> Thanks Velichka. I hope I make more sense now.
>
> --
>
> Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson
>
> Technical Lead, OpenSpending
>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org>
>
> /Empowering through Open Knowledge/
>
> http://okfn.org/ | @okfn <http://twitter.com/OKFN> | OKF on Facebook
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> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:48:50 +0000
> From: Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson <tryggvi.bjorgvinsson at okfn.org>
> Subject: Re: [open-economics] open-economics Digest, Vol 30, Issue 4
> To: open-economics at lists.okfn.org
> Message-ID: <51B200E2.5070202 at okfn.org>
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>
> Hi, it's me (again) ;-)
>
> On f?s 7.j?n 2013 10:35, Florian Oswald wrote:
> > Reinhard and Rogoff have all the data used for their book "This time is
> > different" online. Amongst other things, they have a host of inflation
> > indices for many countries:
> >
> > http://www.reinhartandrogoff.com/data/browse-by-topic/topics/2/
> >
> > See if that helps.
>
> Wow! That's the best data I've seen. There are some gaps for some of the
> countries (and the data only goes up to 2010) so I'm still at a loss as
> to what to do when there is not data.
>
> Also this data isn't open so I would have to get permission before I do
> anything with it. I'm going to contact Reinhart and Rogoff and see if
> they're willing to allow me to use the data and release it in an openly
> licensed data package.
>
> > P.S.: If you are lucky enough to discover a mistake in the excel sheet,
> > write a paper and get famous! :-)
>
> Hmm... A different career path... I like your idea ;-)
>
> --
>
> Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson
>
> Technical Lead, OpenSpending
>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org>
>
> /Empowering through Open Knowledge/
>
> http://okfn.org/ | @okfn <http://twitter.com/OKFN> | OKF on Facebook
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