Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

The business tendency survey indicators cover a standard set of indicators for four economic sectors: manufacturing, construction, retail trade and other services. This includes an indicator of overall business conditions or business confidence in each sector. The consumer opinion survey indicators cover a restricted set of indicators on consumer confidence, expected economic situation and price expectations.   Business and consumer opinion (tendency) surveys provide qualitative information that has proved useful for monitoring the current economic situation. Typically they are based on a sample of enterprises or households and respondents are asked about their assessments of the current situation and expectations for the immediate future. For enterprise surveys this concerns topics such as production, orders, stocks etc. and in the case of consumer surveys their intentions concerning major purposes, economic situation now compared with the recent past and expectations for the immediate future. Many survey series provide advance warning of turning points in aggregate economic activity as measured by GDP or industrial production. Such series are known as leading indicators in cyclical analysis. These types of survey series are widely used as component series in composite leading indicators.   The main characteristic of these types of surveys is that instead of asking for exact figures, they usually ask for the direction of change e.g. a question on tendency by reference to a “normal” state, e.g. of production level. Possible answers are generally of the three point scale type e.g. up/same/down or above normal/normal/below normal for enterprise surveys and of the five point scale type e.g. increase sharply/increase slightly/remain the same/fall slightly/fall sharply for consumer surveys. In presenting the results as a time series, only the balance is shown. That is “same” or “normal” answers are ignored and the balance is obtained by taking the difference between percentages of respondents giving favourable and unfavourable answers.   Virtually all business tendency and consumer opinion survey data are presented as time series of balances in this dataset, either in raw or seasonally adjusted form. Very few series are presented as indices, and where these exist they have generally been converted from underlying balances by countries before submitting the data to the OECD.

The International Transport Forum collects, on a quarterly basis, monthly data from all its Member countries. When monthly information is not available then quarterly data is provided. The survey contains a dozen variables selected for their quarterly availability among reporting countries. Data are collected from Transport Ministries, statistical offices and other institution designated as official data source. The survey used for this exercise is the ITF "Quarterly Transport Statistics". Variables collected are rail, road and inland waterways goods transport (T-km), rail passengers (P-km), road traffic (V-km), first registration of brand new vehicles, petrol deliveries to the road transport sector and road fatalities. Although there are clear definitions for all the terms used in this survey, countries might have different methodologies to gather or estimate quarterly data. The information provided in short-term surveys does not necessarily have the same coverage as annual data exercises and therefore remains provisional. Depending on countries, data is not always revised so totals might not correspond to the sum of the elements. The main purpose of this data collection is to identify in advance changes in transport data trends. In case of missing data for a country, ITF can calculate estimates based generally on growth rates from previous years or from data available from other sources. These estimates are used solely to calculate aggregated trends in graphic representations and are not shown at the individual country level.  

The Financial Statistics dataset contains predominantly monthly statistics, and associated statistical methodological information, for the 36 OECD member countries and some selected other countries. The dataset itself contains financial statistics on 4 separate subjects: Monetary Aggregates, Interest Rates, Exchange Rates, and Share Prices. The data series presented within these subjects have been chosen as the most relevant financial statistics for which comparable data across countries is available. In all cases a lot of effort has been made to ensure that the data are internationally comparable across all countries presented and that all the subjects have good historical time-series’ data to aid with analysis. All data are available monthly, and are presented as either an index (where the year 2015 is the base year) or as a level depending on which measure is seen as the most appropriate and/or useful in the economic analysis context.

The 'Production and Sales (MEI)' dataset is a dataset containing predominantly monthly statistics, and associated statistical methodological information, for the 34 OECD member countries and for selected other economies. The Production and Sales dataset contains industrial statistics on four separate subjects: Production; Sales; Orders; and Work started. The data series presented within these subjects have been chosen as the most relevant industrial statistics for which comparable data across countries is available. For Production, data comprise Indices of industrial production (IIP) for total industry, manufacturing, energy and crude petroleum; and further disaggregation of manufacturing production for intermediate goods and for investment goods and crude steel. For others, they comprise retail trade and registration of passenger cars; and permits issued and work started for dwellings. Considerable effort has been made to ensure that the data are internationally comparable across all countries presented, coverage for as many countries as possible, and that all the subjects have reasonable length of time-series to assist analysis. Most data are available monthly and are presented as an index (where the year 2010 is the base year) or as a level depending on which measure is seen as the most appropriate and/or useful in the economic analysis context. Due to differences in statistical or economic environment at country level, however, availability of data varies from one country to another.