European countries’ GDP, euro or not

Mitsuo Shiota 2019-04-11

• Libraries
• Get GDP data
• Add country names by looking up codes
• Which country introduced euro, and when
• Plot

Updated: 2024-12-18

I used to predict whether the country adopts euro or not by fitting logistic regression using its GDP recovery from the Great Recession up to the first quarter of 2020 in old README. I dropped that part, as the coronavirus disrupted the economies.

Libraries

As usual I attach tidyverse package. As I will struggle with dates, I attach lubridate packeage. I also attach rvest package for web scraping to get the euro entry date of each country. Although I don’t attach, I use eurostat package to get GDP data, and countrycode package to convert country codes to names.

library(tidyverse)
library(rvest)

theme_set(theme_light())

Get GDP data

Eurostat Database provides a wide variety of data. Honestly, it is hard to find the right table and parameters. Anyway, I dig Data navigation tree down to “Quarterly national accounts”, reach “GDP and main components (output, expenditure and income) (namq_10_gdp)”, and know the table name is “namq_10_gdp”. Click Data Explorer icon, and a new window with a large table appears. Look at the upper part, and click + icon to know the parameters, like:

• unit: CLV15_MNAC: Chain linked volumes (2015), million units of national currency
• s_adj: SCA: Seasonally and calendar adjusted data
• na_item: B1GQ; Gross domestic product at market prices

Cheat sheet: eurostat R package helps me.

eu_gdp <- eurostat::get_eurostat(id = "namq_10_gdp",
                                 time_format = "raw",
                                 filters = list(
                                   unit = "CLV15_MNAC",
                                   s_adj = "SCA",
                                   na_item = "B1GQ")
                                 )

## Dataset query already saved in cache_list.json...

## Reading cache file /tmp/RtmpsFPuYa/eurostat/0e6b5f4b12c2c954023c717c539aa99a.rds

## Table  namq_10_gdp  read from cache file:  /tmp/RtmpsFPuYa/eurostat/0e6b5f4b12c2c954023c717c539aa99a.rds

eu_gdp <- eu_gdp %>% 
  select(time, geo, values)

# eu_gdp$geo <- as.character(eu_gdp$geo)

eu_gdp <- eu_gdp |> 
  mutate(time = yq(time))

Add country names by looking up codes

I follow the order of “Tutorial: Country codes and protocol order”.

country_codes_eu28 <- c("BE", "BG", "CZ", "DK", "DE", "EE", "IE",
                   "EL", "ES", "FR", "HR", "IT", "CY", "LV",
                   "LT", "LU", "HU", "MT", "NL", "AT", "PL", 
                   "PT", "RO", "SI", "SK", "FI", "SE", "UK") 

GDP data contain 3 countries outside EU, so I add them to codes.

country_codes <- c(country_codes_eu28, "NO", "CH", "RS")

I create the lookup table of country code and name by utilizing countrycode package.

lookup_tbl <- tibble(
  geo = country_codes,
  name = countrycode::countrycode(country_codes, 'eurostat', 'country.name')
)

Then I add “name” column to GDP data by matching code and name, and drop organizations, like EU-28, which don’t match country codes.

eu_gdp <- eu_gdp %>% 
  left_join(lookup_tbl, by = "geo") %>% 
  drop_na(name)

Which country introduced euro, and when

Now I would like to know when countries switched from national currencies to euro. I use rvest package for web scraping. I have found wiki page “Euro”, and managed to get when euro area countries fixed their currenicies to the euro.

wiki <- read_html("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro")

euro_entry <- wiki %>% 
  html_nodes("table") %>% 
  .[[3]] %>% 
  html_nodes("td") %>% 
  html_text() %>% 
  str_sub(1, -1) %>% 
  str_remove("\n")

euro_entry_tbl <- 
  tibble(
    geo = euro_entry[seq(1, 95, 5) + 1],
    date_fixed = euro_entry[seq(1, 95, 5) + 3]
  )

euro_entry_tbl$date_fixed <- as_date(euro_entry_tbl$date_fixed, format = "%d %B %Y")

euro_entry_tbl <- euro_entry_tbl %>% 
  mutate(
    geo = str_sub(geo, 1L, 2L),
    geo = if_else(geo == "GR", "EL", geo) # Greece
  )

I add “date_fixed” column to GDP data, compare it with “time” column, and get “euro” column to show whether each time (row) is in euro (“Y”) or not (“N”).

eu_gdp <- eu_gdp %>% 
  left_join(euro_entry_tbl, by = "geo") %>% 
  mutate(euro = if_else(time >= date_fixed, "Y", "N")) %>% 
  replace_na(list(euro = "N"))

eu_gdp$name <- factor(eu_gdp$name, levels = lookup_tbl$name)

eu_gdp$euro <- factor(eu_gdp$euro)

Plot

I plot real GDP from 1Q 1995 by setting 1Q 2007 (just before the Great Recession) = 100.

I set the common y-axis range so that I can see the movements of most countries easily. As a result, some countries went out of the plot. If you don’t like it, set YLIM as you like.

# set the parameters to plot
START <- "1995-01-01"
STD <- "2007-01-01"
YLIM <- c(65, 135)

Line is colored differently depending on whether it is in euro or not.

# index STD = 100
eu_gdp <- eu_gdp %>% 
  group_by(name) %>% 
  mutate(index = values / values[which(time == STD)] * 100) %>% 
  ungroup()

# plot
eu_gdp %>% 
  filter(time >= START) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = time, y = index)) + 
  geom_hline(yintercept = 100, color = "gray70", linewidth = 0.5) +
  geom_line(aes(color = euro), linewidth = 1) +
  facet_wrap(vars(name)) +
  coord_cartesian(ylim = YLIM) +
  theme(
    axis.title.x = element_blank(),
    axis.title.y = element_blank(),
    strip.background = element_blank(),
    strip.text = element_text(color = "black")
    ) +
  labs(
    title = str_c("Europe; Real GDP, ", quarter(STD, with_year = TRUE),
                  "Q=100")
    )

ggsave(filename = "output/GDP-euro-or-not.pdf",
       width = 10, height = 8, units = "in", dpi = 300)

EOL