Template talk:Infobox economy

Example

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

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
Government 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)

 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))

I disagree. There are many reasons why people choose not to be part of the labor force, and at the same time some economies where there is so little reward for work that everyone has to find some employment just to make ends meet. The proper measure is the unemployment rate, which uses as a denominator those who wish to work, rather than some arbitrary age group. DOR (HK) (talk) 06:11, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Bottom box code change

Changed the code from this

|belowstyle = background:lightblue;
|below= {{#if:{{{cianame|}}}|<!--then:-->[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/{{{cianame}}}.html 
'''Main data source: CIA World Fact Book''']<br/>|}} ''All values, unless otherwise stated, 
are in [[United States dollar|US dollars]]''

to this

|belowstyle = {{#ifeq:{{{usebelowbox}}}|no|<!--then:-->|<!--else:-->background:lightblue;}}
|below= {{#ifeq:{{{usebelowbox}}}|no|
<!--then:-->|
<!--else:-->
{{#if:{{{cianame|}}}|<!--then:-->[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/{{{cianame}}}.html
 '''Main data source: CIA World Fact Book''']<br/>|<!--else:-->}}
{{#ifeq:{{{presentUS$asdefault}}}|no|<!--then:-->|<!--else:--> ''All values, unless otherwise stated, are in 
[[United States dollar|US dollars]]''}}
}}

Tested as much as I could for backward compatibility; anyway, as far as I can tell there is no reason not to be backwards compatible; correct me of course, if I'm wrong in any way.
Added btw also comments (<!--else:-->, <!--then:-->) and structured in such a way so that it could be more readable and helpful to future editors.
This change gives page editors the additional options of controlling the bottom small box:

• 1.Setting usebelowbox to no makes the bottom box disappear; usage, reasons of change and to use, obvious, i.e where the main source is not the CIA FactBook and the US$ is not the mainly used currency. Obviously the default value is yes (or whatever), hence the backwards compatibility.
• 2.Setting presentUS$asdefault to no makes the statement

  All values, unless otherwise stated, are in US dollars

  disappear from the aforementioned little bottom box; usage, reasons, again pretty obvious. Obviously the default value is yes (or whatever), hence the backwards compatibility.

I've done this change due to the Economy of Greece article where both statements, i.e.

Main data source: CIA World Fact Book

and

All values, unless otherwise stated, are in US dollars

are inaccurate. In fact so inaccurate and hence so disrespectful to the hard work-edits that has been done on that article that reading them makes me mad... :D
Thanatos|talk 08:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to include 1.a.Net international investment position b.external deficit/surplus (current account balance) 2.Median salary (net and/or gross)

• 1.
  • a.Net international investment position-NIIP, being closely related to (thankfully already included) gross external debt is perhaps a sine qua non in most international financial crises, balance of payment crises etc, of the past, present and future. One might think of it as something close to the net external debt and as such the most "real" debt a country can have, as the thing closest to what is commonly meant by debt. Domestic debt in comparison, though certainly important itself, can be thought of as debt a country owes to itself ; public-government debt, if mostly held domestically, is likewise something like a debt of a country to itself. Hence they are or can be manyatimes very misleading. E.g the present Eurozone crisis is mostly about external debt (in a foreign currency etc) and therefore also about NIIP.
    It would therefore be a very useful and educating indicator-field to include.
  • b.Balance of payments or current account balance (I'm talking about 1 thing only, name depends on terminology). In the same way we speak about public debt and deficit, this refers to the external deficit. Imports/exports do not suffice; this is, let's say, the superset of imports/exports surplus/deficit that includes e.g. capital flows.
• 2.The presently available indicators on salaries-wages, i.e. gross&net average-mean salaries are not representative enough of salaries-wages in any country as the relevant distribution (I'm simplifying) is not a gaussian one; the averages are in fact in most cases very misleading.
  Median salaries imo should be at least added.
• I can code these in myself, no need to trouble anyone; I just need the consensus' approval. Thanatos|talk 14:13, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Since noone has commented, either in agreement or disagreement, I went ahead and added the indicators anyway; their use is anyway not mandatory... ;-) Thanatos|talk 08:34, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Regarding Balance of Payments vs. Current-account, the first is always, by definition, zero. If the Current-account Balance is 10, the capital account balance and rounding errors must, by definition, equal -10. BoP and C/A are not interchangeable, despite the way many journalists write. DOR (HK) (talk) 13:38, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Rank

What is this field for? Rank of what? Real GDP? PPP GDP? Revenues? Kaldari (talk) 23:41, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Kaldari, no clue. could check to see if you can find an article which uses it? it was added by Trust Is All You Need in this edit. Frietjes (talk) 15:51, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

@Kaldari:, @Frietjes: can't remember doing it, but a look at the Economy of the Soviet Union infobox explains. --TIAYN (talk) 16:29, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trust Is All You Need: thanks for the example. seems like this could be split into more specific rank parameters? Frietjes (talk) 16:34, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

now tracking with Category:Pages using infobox economy with rank parameter. Frietjes (talk) 16:37, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

added |gdp rank= so we can probably replace most of the |rank= Frietjes (talk) 17:09, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I finished migrating all the pages that were using rank (except for this talk page). I'll go ahead and remove the param. Kaldari (talk) 21:18, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Bank rate

change ((Bank Rate|Base Borrowing Rate)) to ((Bank rate|Base borrowing rate))

Done Kharkiv07^Talk 00:13, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Use of flags

Most uses of this infobox include flag icons (like this: Poland) in 'Main export partners' and 'Main import partners'. Has this been discussed before somewhere? This usage is pretty consistent from what I've seen. Personally, I think it's unnecessary and distracting, and WP:MOS advises against it (WP:INFOBOXFLAG). In Economy of Poland, for example, Russia is right above Netherlands, and the similarity makes it just confusing enough to be a stumbling block, especially surrounded by other flags and infobox details:

Germany 27.3%,
Russia 12.2%,
Netherlands 5.9%,
China 5.4%,
Italy 5.2%,
Czech Republic 4.3%,
France 4.2% (2012 est.)

Notice how something resembling the flag of Austria makes an uninvited appearance ()? It's not impossible to visually parse, but I'm not really sure what the flags are adding. If this has been discussed before, or if editors are strongly attached to the practice, I won't raise a stink about it. Grayfell (talk) 08:13, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I would strongly recommend removing the flags. Jolly Ω Janner 21:16, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Scale for Gini coefficient?

Some pages using this infobox express the Gini coefficient on a scale of 0 to 1, others do it on a scale of 0 to 100. This makes it look a bit strange if you're comparing countries.

Should a scale be chosen and mentioned in the documentation as the scale to use? If so, I'd vote for 0 to 1, as that's the scale used for the text on Gini coefficient (although one graph uses the 0 to 100 scale). Guy Harris (talk) 04:20, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

CIA Factbook URL change

The URL scheme has changed:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bx.html -> https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/brunei/

Two things to be changed:

1. The template to reflect the new base URL
2. Every instance of the template eg. |cianame=bx -> |cianame=brunei

A map of the code -> name is needed for #2. I have that. -- GreenC 02:45, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

1 and 2 are done. -- GreenC 03:18, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Remove Ease of Doing Business index

Given its (a) apparent irregularity and (b) discontinuation, would suggest removal of the Ease of Doing Business parameter. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 19:45, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion: Removal of "Main data source: CIA World Fact Book" footnote

I would suggest that we remove the footnote, since most economies use IMF or World Bank data. Vyvagaba (talk) 10:32, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I'm not aware of any other templates which use a fixed source like this. I feel it encourages editors not to add relevant sources to fields. Dgp4004 (talk) 08:20, 5 March 2024 (UTC)