Template talk:Infobox economy

Example of usage is to the right. Contact me if you have any problems. I think this is a pretty good listing of pertinent economic data; obviously not everything can be on here. The infobox is modeled after the old infobox for Germany and Canada's economies.LittleDan^talk 19:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Economy of Canada
Rank	11th (2004)
Currency	Canadian dollar (CAD)
Fiscal year	1 April - 31 March
Trade organisations	NAFTA, OECD, WTO and others
Statistics
GDP	$1.023 trillion (2004)
GDP growth	2.4% (2004)
GDP per capita	$31,500 (2004)
GDP by sector	agriculture (2.3%), industry (26.4%), services (71.3%) (2004)
Inflation (CPI)	1.9% (2004)
Population below poverty line	15.5% (2004) [1]
Labour force	17.37 million (2004)
Labour force by occupation	agriculture (3%), manufacturing (15%), construction (5%), services (74%), other (3%)(2000)
Unemployment	6.4% (July 2006)
Main industries	transportation equipment, chemicals, processed and unprocessed minerals, food products, wood and paper products, fish products, petroleum and natural gas
External
Exports	$315.6 billion (2004)
Export goods	motor vehicles and parts, industrial machinery, aircraft, telecommunications equipment, chemicals, plastics, fertilizers, wood pulp, timber, crude petroleum, natural gas, electricity, aluminum
Main export partners	U.S. 85.2%, Japan 2.1%, UK 1.6% (2004)
Imports	$256.1 billion (2004)
Import goods	machinery and equipment, motor vehicles and parts, crude oil, chemicals, electricity, durable consumer goods
Main import partners	U.S. 58.9%, the People's Republic of China 6.8%, Mexico 3.8% (2004)
Public finances
Public debt	$501,493 (millions of dollars 2004)
Revenues	$151 billion (2004)
Expenses	$144 billion (2004)
Economic aid	$2 billion (donor) (2004)
Main data source: CIA World Fact Book All values, unless otherwise stated, are in US dollars

Economy of Pakistan

The economic growth of Pakistan is 4.7% is 2008, but I see 5.8%. (Dewan S. Ahsan 19:53, 27 July 2009 (UTC))

Inflated figures

The box on the right shows that the GDP (PPP) of India is over $5 trillion. This is far higher than the 2007 estimate of $2-3 trillion. I suspect someone inflated the figures, as India's GDP (PPP) simply did not double in a year. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.229.121.13 (talk) 22:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I too second this opinion. The reference (cia.gov indicates a figure or $2.966 trillion (2007 est.) So this needs to be fixed. I couldn't do it myself, don't know why?

Me too. The GDP figures, including per capital, are completely wrong. The box claims to get its data from CIA world fact books, but after checking for figures there, I am puzzled as to how Wikipedia's info box could get virtually every figure so wrong. By78 (talk) 22:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

British spellings?

I'm just wondering why this uses British spelling? I wouldn't mind, really, except it looks kinda strange on the Economy of the United States page to have British spelling. David Fuchs ^(talk) 23:15, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

It actually has a parameter for US spelling—just add "|spelling = US" to the infobox and it'll be changed automatically. I've just fixed the Economy of the United States. Mr. Absurd (talk) 00:43, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Extra space??

Can someone fix the extra space this template gives at the top of every article? Thanks. ☆ CieloEstrellado 02:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Reworking with Template:Infobox

I noticed that this template was adding extra space to the top of articles (see here, here, and here for examples). I went into the template code to fix it and I also saw that the template used old code and wasn't based off of Template:Infobox, so I rewrote it. I've checked it over as best as I could, but if you notice any minor mistakes, please change them right away. If there are any serious issues (I'll be checking the usage in actual articles, so there shouldn't be any), please revert immediately and leave a notice here or on my talk page.

Probably the biggest (and hopefully only) difference is that Template:Infobox adds a small "This box: view • talk • edit" link section at the bottom. It's either non-optional or I don't know how to remove it. In any case, I don't think it's a negative thing, so it can probably stay.

I removed the Template:Intricate template—if I understand its usage correctly, it's no longer needed. Mr. Absurd (talk) 01:06, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The view/talk/edit links are optional (wasn't originally but there were requests :), simply omit the "name" parameter entirely and it goes away. Bryan Derksen (talk) 21:12, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

nominal GDP

why isn't there a nominal GDP data line? does nobody care? Anatoly.bourov (talk) 14:55, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that Anatoly is right, there should be nominal GDP as it gives you better estimate on the total economic power of a country. In my opinion PPP is more or less useless figure as nominal gives you values in raw monetary terms. I propose that GDP nominal should be added to template. --Gamepad (talk) 14:27, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Guinea Pigs

Come on guys we need to take this out this is ridiculous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.104.106.204 (talk) 15:45, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

box needs to be fixed

all these numbers are wrong, there is no way the uk owes 865 trillion in debt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.178.85.7 (talk) 22:01, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

"Rank"

The documentation for Template:Infobox Economy includes a line with "rank = " after "Trade organisations". This "rank" field does not show in the actual template and it is not included in the template code. Please fix. --Zlerman (talk) 03:15, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

the "German armies" joke

The "German armies" joke in the "Import goods" section (top-right box) might be considered funny. However, it might also be puzzling for non native English speakers or people not knowing French history. For example, a possible mistake is to understand that France imports military equipments from Germany, which is a serious nonsense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.178.72.57 (talk) 16:34, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

New Indicator for National Economy Infoboxes

I would like to add an economic/financial indicator, Doing Business Rank, to National Economy infoboxes. Full disclosure: I work with an international development organization. Because of my COI I wanted to present my case to editors before contributing to infoboxes. I think it would be a clearer and more useful way to present the data for each country than adding the statistic in the general text of each economy's page.

I believe a fair evaluation suggests that the Doing Business Ranking would be a legitimate economic indicator because it is similar to the type of indicators currently used: 1) It is the flagship economic indicator from one of the largest international organizations, the World Bank, analogous to the HDI from the UN. 2) It is as useful for academic research as the HDI and Gini Coefficient, but is also used by commercial interests and thus is useful and practical information to a wider audience. 3) It is consistent with the purpose and requirements of infoboxes: a) it is comparable (across over 180 economies) b) it is concise ("Doing Business Rank: Nth") and c) materially relevant (it is an economic, financial and legal indicator of the business environment of an entire economy).

I presented my case here before editing to avoid any kind of problems my COI might engender. If editors agree that it is a useful and legitimate contribution to the infoboxes and community (which based on my research, I believe it is) I will add it to some pages as a prudent test run and then if there are no serious complaints consider extending to all the appropriate infoboxes.

Thanks for your consideration.

Win.monroe (talk) 20:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Win.Monroe

I think that's an interesting proposal. Thanks!

Before adding a new indicator, I would normally ask whether it's (a) useful, (b) consistent, and (c) complementary (does it dovetail with other indicators, without overwhelming the reader). Those three come from my day job; since this is wikipedia we could add verifiability too.

• Useful: Well, at first glance it seems so. I think it's a genuinely informative indicator that summarises a set of interesting details of an economy, whether from a commercial or political or academic perspective.
• Consistent: Not sure about this. It can be very difficult to ensure consistent indicators for a complex, changing system with known and unknown deficiencies. For instance, suppose a government starts a big anti-corruption initiative; the first measurable results might be an *increase* in reported corruption, or a worsening of corruption perceptions (because the public set their sights higher), or an increase in regulation of certain officials/processes. This is inconsistent because the indicator would give a worse score to an economy that has actually done a good thing. To what extent does the EoDBI resist such distortion?
• Complementary: Yes, I think so - although possibly the "statistics" section of the infobox is getting a bit long (I'm not sure where else we'd put it, unless we're going to add a new section to the infobox that may include other indicators in future)
• Verifiable: Well, it's the World Bank, surely they're a reliable source and they publish these figures somewhere...

So, I'm pretty favourable. My main qualms would be "Is it a consistent indicator or can it give counterintuitive results?", and "Is the infobox going to get overcrowded?"

Any suggestions / assurances /complaints? :-)

bobrayner (talk) 13:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Bobrayner, you make two very good points for consideration. If I understand you correctly they are: (1)The first seems to be less about consistency and more about whether improvements might actually be measured as a bad policy. (2)The second is whether the infoboxes are too crowded.

With regards to (1) the Ease of Doing Business is not merely a measure whether there are more regulations or less regulations, but instead the efficiency of regulations. That is to say, increasing regulations can improve the ease of Doing Business because they might measurably shorten the time it takes to register property or handle commercial legal disputes. Details about how Doing Business is calculated can be read here. Additionally every reform that is measured is described in a database, allowing for verifiability as to whether the judgment of it as an improvement or not is legitimate. The actual rankings and information can be found here. Perceptions of corruption, etc. don't get counted. Instead it is things like "days required for construction approval," or "procedures required to apply for a loan," etc.

In terms of (2) it seems to me that if there is going to be any infobox that is heavy on the numbers and data it should be the economy infobox. I think that together the Gini, HDI and Doing Business Rank, offer a very clear, nuanced and insightful picture of a country's economy that GDP conceals. All together we can see the size (GDP), growth (GDP), distribution of wealth (Gini) and health (HDI), and business environment (DB) of an economy. That said, my initial plan was to start off with a test run on about 10 or 15 economy infoboxes in order to get feedback. I think this would allow people to comment if it seemed to be getting to crowded.

Let me know if this doesn't sufficiently cover your concerns or if you have any additional questions.

Thanks again for your time!

Win.monroe (talk) 15:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)Win.Monroe

I object adding this new indicator. Infobox should be kept concise and this indicator is not meaningful for the general public. Also there is a long section of criticism in Ease of Doing Business page. Norwegian study finds it easy to manipulate and therefore may not tell anything meaningful but willingness to fudge numbers. So I consider it unreliable, not in general interest, not belonging to every country's economic page and that those interested can find it easily on it's own page, where it belongs. Also Win.monroe try to get more consensus before doing wide-ranging changes. 88.193.107.106 (talk) 10:10, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to contribute to this discussion. I appreciate your concerns, but I disagree with you in several respects. The DB rank is more concise than the majority of economic indicators currently used such as "main industries," "main exports," etc. Additionally, DB, because of its commercial applications, is actually more meaningful to the general public than most of the current indicators.

As for criticism, most major economic indicators receive criticism, including GDP, HDI and the Gini Coefficient. That is only natural given the nature of social science research. However, if you carefully read the criticism section of the Ease of Doing Business, most of it is discussing how the report has addressed and resolved the criticisms made.

In terms of getting consensus, perhaps you are right. I tried very hard to garner discussion by, for example, posting here and in the Wikiproject: economics talk page, but I received little response either for or against. As such, I decided to be bold, in hopes that would help promote discussion.

Thanks again for your concerns and please let me know if I haven't addressed something. Win.monroe (talk) 19:20, 16 September 2010 (UTC)Win.Monroe

Whatever one may think about surveys ranking countries, they are now a fact of life and as such should be reflected here. As a balance across different measures and a list short enough to keep the info box manageable, I propose,

World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index

World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index

Transparency International Corruption Index

Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index

Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index

DOR (HK) (talk) 03:31, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

CIA World Factbook

Can anyone explain why this is considered, informally, the Holy Grail of statistical data at Wikipedia? Is it just that people are too lazy to go to the original sources, and so use this secondary source? The World Bank, IMF or even the UN would be far more credible, ah, more useful, er more neutral um, more direct sources. DOR (HK) (talk) 05:16, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Apparently not. OK, so what we should be doing is deleting CIA sourcing whenever there is a better -- i.e., primary -- source available. DOR (HK) (talk) 02:19, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Reflist inside this template

Somebody put a Reflist into the template at Economy of Germany (and there may be others), which breaks display of the CIA Worldbook link. What to do? Lars T. (talk) 01:20, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Y Done. If this happens in the future, you can edit the document, and remove the redundant {{reflist}} from within the infobox.
--Gyrobo (talk) 01:56, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Can nominal gdp be added or at least clarify when ppp gdp is used

There are articles for countries like Indonesia that list the ppp gdp which is almost double that of nominal gdp, it doesn't give a clear picture of the actual size of the economy (the gdp that it includes for Indonesia would be about the size of Australia's nominal gdp, but it is actually behind it by a lot). The Economy of Australia article includes nominal gdp while the economies of developing nations like Indonesia only includes the ppp gdp. Many countries are only showing the gdp with the higher number. Grmike (talk) 00:42, 22 November 2010 (UTC)grmike

Where two economies are highly similar, sharing typical production and consumption patterns, it may be useful to compare identical baskets of goods to determine an indicative purchasing power parity exchange rate. Where countries are not highly similar – China and the US, for example, or India and Belgium – PPP adds no value. Moreover, where economies are enormously externally oriented, such as Singapore or Hong Kong, PPP has little to offer, since no one in their right mind would sell anything of value for any number of PPP currency units. Hence, PPP at best may be considered of secondary (or lower) value to the typical Wikipedia user. DOR (HK) (talk) 06:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Deficits

Why are deficits, rather than balances included? Not all economies run budget deficits, trade deficits or any other kind. Can we please make the categories NPOV? DOR (HK) (talk) 02:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Employment rate

I would put employment rate in economy infobox. See also List of countries by employment rate (Datastat (talk) 17:22, 29 April 2011 (UTC))