Jones-Obstfeld Saving, Investment, and Gold Data for 13 Countries

Source Jones, Obstfeld

This page contains links to the data used for the paper Saving, Investment, and Gold: A Reassessment of Historical Current Account Data (1850-1945) by Matthew T. Jones and Maurice Obstfeld.

Complete documentation of data sources is in Appendix 9.2 of the publication. Please study that document and the full paper (NBER Working Paper 6103) before making use of the series offered here. Jones_Obstfeld_Data.zip is a pkzip 5.7 Mb file containing all the Excel and ASCII text files for all the countries. It includes the source data. Complete data by country is available in the following spreadsheets and text files below. Each country spreadsheet has 4 basic pages. The first page contains the final series for the country. Consult the data file description below the data table for more detail. Updates and changes

Data
Years	All Files, Pkzipped	.
MS Excel (Original version)	ASCII Tab-delimited text
Final	National Accounts	Gold	Notes
1861-1945	Australia	Australia	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
Mint	Curr Ac	Misc	UK Gold
1870-1945	Canada	Canada	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1874-1914	Denmark	Denmark	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1872-1945	Finland	Finland	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1851-1913 1919-1938	France	France	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1877-1913	Germany	Germany	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1861-1936	Italy	Italy	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1885-1944	Japan	Japan	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1865-1939	Norway	Norway	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1885-1913	Russia	Russia	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1875-1945	Sweden	Sweden	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1869-1945	U.K.	U.K.	Final	Natl Ac	Gold	Notes
1870-1945	U.S.	U.S.	Final	Kuznets	NBER	Notes
USHS	Curr Ac

Each country spreadsheet has 4 basic worksheets. The first worksheet contains the final series for the country.
Australia and the U.S. have extra worksheets described below.

Data File Descriptions
Worksheet	Contents
All Countries
Final	GDP -- gross domestic product or net national product CF -- capital formation, which includes changes in stocks/inventories ST -- changes in stocks/inventories CAO -- original current account data from historical sources CAA -- our nongold current account CA_NG, which excludes all gold flows SG -- net shipments or exports of gold CMG -- change in the monetary gold stock
National Accounts	GDP, capital formation, stocks etc. *called Kuznets in the U.S., see below
Gold	Gold flows and monetary stock
Notes	Details on the data sources
Australia-only
Mint	Flows of gold through the mints -- (Australia)
Current Accounts	More detailed data on the current account -- (Australia)
Misc	Mostly more gold data -- (Australia)
U.K. Gold	More gold data -- (Australia)
U.S.-only
Kuznets	National accounts data from Kuznets -- (U.S.)
USHS	Data from U.S. Historical Statistics -- (U.S.)
NBER	Data from the NBER Macrohistory database -- (U.S.)
Current Accounts	More detailed data on the current account -- (U.S.)