Gonzalo Camba-Mendez and Ana Lamo, "Short Term Monitoring of Fiscal Policy
Discipline", Journal of Applied Econometrics, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2004, 
pp. 247-265.

All data files are zipped in the file cldata.zip. Unix users should use
"unzip -a".

Seasonally adjusted quarterly real GDP and the GDP deflator are taken from
the OECD Main Economic Indicators. The overall government budget balance
ratio is constructed as the ratio of annual nominal net government lending
over annual nominal GDP. The source of both the numerator and denominator
are the OECD National Accounts. The data are in plain ASCII text files. Data
are organised in columns. The first column of each file contains the date.
Date format is for example 1975.25 for quarterly observations and 1970 for
annual observations. References in the paper to inflation should be
understood as proxied by changes in the GDP deflator.

A) Data Files:

degdp.txt: German GDP data. Data organised in 128 rows and 3 columns. First
	   column contains the date, second column contains quarterly GDP in
	   constant prices and the the third column contains the GDP
	   deflator. 

dedef.txt: contains annual deficit ratio (Deficit over GDP) for Germany.
	   Data organised in 41 rows and 2 columns. The first column
	   contains the date and the second column the deficit ratio.

itgdp.txt: Italian GDP data. Data organised in 124 rows and 3 columns. The
	   first column contains the date, the second column contains
	   quarterly GDP in constant prices and the third column contains
	   the GDP deflator. 

itdef.txt: contains annual deficit ratio (Deficit over GDP) for Italy. Data
	   organised in 41 rows and 2 columns. The first column contains the
	   date and the second column the deficit ratio.


Gonzalo Camba-Mendez
gonzalo.camba-mendez@ecb.int

Ana Lamo
ana.lamo@ecb.int

Both at:

European Central Bank
DG-Research
Kaiserstrasse 29
D-60311 Frankfurt am Main
Germany