NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

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

This page contains links to the data used for the paper Saving, Investment, and Gold: A Reassessment of Historical Current Account Data by Matthew T. Jones, hcmtj99@spamex.com , and Maurice Obstfeld. Complete documentation of data sources is in Appendix 9.2 of the publication. Please study that document and the full paper 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.)

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