The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, headquartered in Paris, identifies itself as "a unique forum where the governments of 30 market democracies work together to address the economic, social, environmental and governance challenges of the globalising world economy, as well as to exploit its opportunities." Its 30 members together produce some 60% of the world's goods and services. Basically, it facilitates information sharing among the membership, and it generates its own data, analyses and forecasts. It came into existence as "an economic counterpart to NATO," set up after World War II "to co-ordinate the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe." If you're interested, a detailed overview of the organization is available.
The OECD Factbook 2005 is the first edition of a new annual publication that "will draw on the OECD's data bank of statistics to present a unique overview of economic, social and environmental trends in the OECD's 30 member countries." It is structured around "100 indicators" grouped into 11 topic areas:
+ Population and migration, covering demographic trends and international migration
+ Economic globalisation, covering international trade and foreign direct investment
+ Labor market, covering employment and unemployment
+ Environment, covering air, water and land, and energy use
+ Public policies, covering government deficits and debt, public expenditures and aid, and taxes
+ Macroeconomic trends, covering gross domestic product, economic growth, productivity, and commodities (production and supply)
+ Prices, covering consumer and producer prices, and purchasing power and competitiveness
+ Science and technology, covering research and development, and information and communications technology
+ Education, covering expenditures on education and outcomes
+ Quality of life, covering health, work and leisure, crime, and transportation
When you click on one of the many, many specific data links, you get a page offering a general discussion of that topic and links to related graphs, charts and tables, additional commentary and related resources from the OECD. Under each chart and graph, a statlink takes you to a direct download of the relevant data in Excel spreadsheet format.
If you prefer, the last link on the righthand side of these pages allows you to download all the information in the main topic heading as a PDF file, such as this one for Quality of Life. These are attractively formatted for printing...or you can just go ahead and order a dead.tree version of the factbook, which costs $63 (in U.S. dollars). OECD says the factbook will be available in French in early April, and it can also be accessed via SourceOECD (PDF), a portal which aggregates online OECD books, periodicals and statistical databases.
The OECD Factbook is not searchable itself, but the OECD website is; enter a keyword in the text box at the top righthand side of the page and choose the resource you want to search from the dropdown menu: all publications, books, periodicals, databases, other site content.
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