Using OECD Statistical Compendium on CD-ROM: Part 1

Note: Data users at UW-Madison may wish to access current OECD Statistics online via the University's subscription to Source OECD.

Introduction

The Statistical Compendium is a publication of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose member countries include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States.

The Statistical Compendium brings together various OECD publications into a compilation of the best-of-OECD statistics. The country-level data cover over 930,000 monthly, quarterly, and annual time series (which start in 1960) and include agriculture and food balances and accounts, labor force statistics, national accounts, international direct investment statistics, financial and fiscal affairs indicators, development and aid statistics, economic indicators, energy statistics for member and non-member countries, industrial activity indicators, and science and technology statistics. Included on the CD-ROM is proprietary access software which allows users to search databases by text, country, indicator and code, and select time series for extract or further processing by CD-based statistical or graphical tools. Extractions can be made in a variety of formats, including Excel, Lotus, and dBase.

In addition to data on OECD Member countries, there is a growing number of Central and Eastern European time series.

Accessing the Data

The Windows-based software generates a series of screens, each with a menu of choices. This guide shows how to go through the various screens and extract the desired time series.

Several points should be kept in mind:

• You must have adequate diskspace to save your extracts.
• When using CD-based statistics and graphing functions, the number of time series you can process may be limited.

Getting Help

The Help pull-down menu offers several resources for more information about the Statistical Compendium:

• Demo, a brief point-and-click demonstration of the CD-ROM.
• Users Manual, a text document divided into multiple sections.
• Classification Plan documents which describe subcoding in detail.
• Explanatory Notes documents that describe in great detail the individual databases within the Statistical Compendium, including methodological notes and explanation of sources.

Forward to OECD Statistical Compendium: Selecting Data

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Email: disc@mailplus.wisc.edu
Last updated 16 October, 2006.