International Financial Statistics (IFS) Users manual

Table of Contents
Part 1 - Overview
Part 2 - Making Selection
Part 3 - Displaying Indicators
Part 4 - Saving Data

For comments and additional information please email khouri@lib1.lan.mcgill.ca or call 398-1429.

Part 1 - Overview

International Financial Statistics (IFS) CD is the CD-ROM version of the International Monteary Fund's main statistical publication. The CD-ROM provides users with time series data covering approximately 26,000 economic concepts which show major economic aggregates used in the analysis of economic development and includes data on the following topics:

Balance of payments, banking and financial systems, employment, exchange rates, Fund position, government finance, interest rates, international liquidity and banking, national accounts, population, prices, production, and trade.

Quarterly and monthly entries generally begin in 1957, and most annual entries begin in 1948. Users can simply search more than 26,000 time series from over 200 countries, quickly select information of interest, and customize viewing and printing. The easy-to-learn retrieval software supports downloading and extraction, and provides help screens and instructions in English, French, and Spanish.

Getting Started

Once CD has been loaded the following screen appears - Basic Search Menu - (Figure1).

Figure 1

The top of the screen shows the basic menu which can be accessed by pressing appropriate function keys.

Function Keys

F1 - Help, which will display help, information on the particular line or cell you are in, for example in the case of Figure 1 where "Frequencies Selected" is the highlighted cell, pressing F1 will display help on "Frequencies Selected".
F2 - Browse, lists all the words and field, for example in the case of "Country Name" pressing F2 will display the list of the countries.
F3 - Display, shows the selected fields with data.
F4 - Connection, changes the logical relations of the search fields
F5 - Save, Load or clear the search option.
F6 - Setup, Changes the setup of the IFS CD.
F7 - Quit, exit the IFS program.

Frequencies Selected: There are three frequencies A (Annual), Q (Quarterly) and M (Monthly), select only one frequency.

Periods to be included: Press F2 to see the list of available time periods. Years series start at 1949 whereas quarterly and monthly series start at 1957.

Country Name: Enter the name of country, or select multiple countries, press F2 for the list.

Time Series Topic: Press F2 to display the list of available topics.

Partner Country Name: Allows selection of a partner country. For most of the serices included in IFS there is no partner country, except for international banking and commodity data.

Time Serice Code: Allows the selection of time series by specifying the unique thirteen-character time series code which is associated with all IFS databases. Time serices codes is constructed as follows: CCCTTTTTVSPPP, where, CCC three character country code (numeric), TTTTT five character topic code (2 numeric followed by 3 alphabetic), V single character version code (alphabetic), S single character control source code (aphabetic), PPP three characters partner country code (numeric).

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Part 2 - Making Selction

This part describes how to make selction in IFS CD. Here as an example we would look at two series Employment and Balance of Payments for Canada on annual basis from 1949 to 1997.

Frequencies Selected:

Press F2 and select A (Annual) and hit ENTER.
Press Down ¯ Arrow key to move to the next field - "Years" under "Periods to be included".

Periods to be included:

Press F2 to see the list of available time periods.
To select all press INS key. To unselect all press DEL key. To select one by one press SPACE key.
By default all years are selected. In this example we are going to use periods from (1949-1997) so 1948 is eliminated by pressing SPACE.
Once the selecion has been made hit ENTER.
Press Down ¯ Arrow key to move to the next field - "Country Name"

Country Name:

Press F2 to see the list of available countries.
To select "Canada", move up or down using ARROW or PAGE keys or type Canada, hit ENTER key.

Time Series Topic:

Press F2 to display the list of available topics.
Using up or down ARROW key select "Employment" and hit ENTER.
For making second selection, press F2 again. Select "Balance of Payment and hit ENTER.

With this basic selection is done, screen should look like figure 2, as shown below. Part 3 would explain how to view indicators and display desired series.

Figure 2 [Back to top]

Part 3 - Displaying Indicators

Pressing F3 while on Figure 2 will bring the following screen (Figure 3).

Figure 3

This screen shows the list of all the indicators available under time series topics "Employemnt" and "Balance of Payments"

Column 1 diplays the name of the country. Column 2 displays the description of the time series and column 3 shows the time series codes (T. S. Key) used by IFS to identiy these indicators (see Part 1).

Viewing actual time series:

In order to view actual time series data press F2 (FULL/LIST), the results are shown in the following screen (figure 4).

Figure 4

In order to change display format press F3 (FORMAT), data is best viewd with FORMAT III.
Use UP & DOWN or LEFT & RIGHT Arrow keys to view the complete list.

Narrowing Down the Selection

After viewing the selection in Figure 3 or Figure 4 you may want to narrow down the selection to only a few indicators. The best way to do this is by using Time Series Codes. For this example we would be using Employment and Trade Balance.

Note down the Time Series Key for the "Employment (15667E..ZF...)" and "Trade Balance (15678ACDZF...)" from either screen on Figure 3 or 4.
Press ESC key to get to the screen on Figure 2.
Erase the selections in the fields "Country Name" and "Time Series Topic"
Press DOWN key to go to "Time Series Code" field.
To make selection press F2 and scroll (or type) towards the "Employment" code by pressing "15667E..ZF...", once selected hit ENTER.
For making next selection press F2 again and scroll (or type) towards the Trade Balance Code. Once selected hit ENTER.
Screen should appear as shown in Figure 5

Figure 5

Press F3 to get to the display screen and then F2 to get to the screen as Figure 4

Figure 6 [Back to top]

Part 4 - Saving Data

To save or export time series data press F5 (Output). The following screen would appear (Figure 7)

Figure 7

Press the DOWN key to go to "Output Type" and press ENTER, following options appear. Select ASCII to save in text form or select Lotus to save in spreadsheet format to view in either Lotus or Excel.

Press the DOWN key to got to "Text Format" and select "TS PRINT III", to get the best format and press ENTER.
Press the UP key to go to "To File..." and press ENTER, following scree appears.

Here selcect drive, directory and give a file name and hit ENTER to save the file.

To exit the system press F8 (DONE). It brings you back to Figure 2.

Press F7, and select "Yes" in respons to "Discard current queary?" and hit ENTER.

Prepared by EDRS Staff
Last Updated: July 6, 1998. DB