readoecd (version 0.3.0)

get_oecd_deficit: Get OECD government deficit data

Description

Downloads (and caches) general government net lending/borrowing as a share of GDP for OECD member countries from the OECD National Accounts (NAAG) database.

Usage

get_oecd_deficit(countries = "all", start_year = 1990, refresh = FALSE)

Value

A data frame with columns:

country

ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code (character)

country_name

English country name (character)

year

Calendar year (integer)

series

"GOVT_NET_LENDING" (character)

value

Net lending/borrowing as a share of GDP (numeric). Positive = surplus; negative = deficit.

unit

"% of GDP" (character)

Arguments

countries

Character vector of ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country codes, or "all" for all available OECD members. Defaults to "all". Run list_oecd_countries() to see available codes.

start_year

Numeric. Earliest year to include. Defaults to 1990.

refresh

Logical. If TRUE, re-download even if a cached copy exists. Defaults to FALSE.

Details

Net lending/borrowing is the difference between government revenue and expenditure, expressed as a percentage of GDP. A positive value indicates a surplus (government saving); a negative value indicates a deficit (government borrowing). This is the standard fiscal balance measure used for cross-country comparisons and is consistent with the System of National Accounts (SNA) definition.

Examples

# \donttest{
deficit <- get_oecd_deficit(c("AUS", "GBR", "USA"), start_year = 2000)
head(deficit)
# }