Country Concordances

Summary

Country concordance is an important aspect of a data technician's job to maintain the International Futures database. Country concordance refers to the differences between the IFs Country list and another organization's country list and merging them to ensure the IFs country list in IFs system. For example, in some organization "Türkiye" is the name displayed, but for IFs we use the name "Turkey". Therefore IFs data technicians need to change the name to "Turkey" for the system to process it. Below lists the organizations IFs draw their data from and the common changes needed as well as a link to a GitHub repository that contains the corresponding country list.

Proxies

Proxies are used when a certain country does not have data points and estimates are needed. Proxies should be used on a case by case basis and for certain series. Proxies essentially use a similar country to the country being approximated (in terms of population, GDP, etc.) and calculates the scale of what the approximated countries value should be.

An example from IHME's series is Kosovo and Albania. Albania is similar and geographically close to Kosovo making it an ideal for a proxy. For a series that deals with death such as SocietalViolenceDeathsTotal use the following equation:

• Kosovo’s number of deaths = Albania’s number of deaths * (Kosovo’s Population / Albania’s Population)

Disaggregation

A lot of organizations have values for dissolved states such as USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and more. This then leads to gaps in values for the newly formed such as Serbia, Slovakia, Czechia, etc. Therefore, disaggregation is a great tool to fill in these gaps. Below is the disaggregation steps for common groups:

1. Czechoslovakia = Slovakia and Czech Republic
2. Yugoslav SFR = Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro
3. Serbia and Montenegro = Serbia and Montenegro
4. Sudan (former) = Sudan and South Sudan
5. USSR = Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan

For disaggregation you are adding up the values for the year after the state disbanded, using the data when the state existed, have the values for the new states after the entity disbanded, and then extrapolate (find the percentage of each state in the data from the OG state and then multiply it to get the right amount) data for the new states in the previous years.

1. USSR add up the values for 1992 (year it disbanded); have totals for 1961-1991; have the values for 15 states for 1992; extrapolate data for 15 states 1961-1991
2. Czechoslovakia add up the values for for 1993 (year it disbanded); have totals for 1961-1992; have the values for 2 states for 1993; extrapolate data for 2 states 1961-1992
3. Sudan (former) add up the values for 2012 (year it disbanded); have totals for 1961-2011; have the values for 2 states for 2012; extrapolate data for 2 states 1961-2011
4. Yugoslav SFR add up the values for 1992 (year it disbanded); have totals for 1961-1991; have the values for 6 states for 1992; extrapolate for 6 states 1961-1991
5. Serbia and Montenegro add up the values for 2006 (year it disbanded); have totals for 1992-2005; have the values for 2 states for 2006; extrapolate data for 2 states 1992-2005

Organizations

Food Agricultural Organization (FAO)

IFs Countries	FAO Countries
Bolivia	Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
China	China, mainland
Congo, Dem. Republic of the	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Cote D'Ivoire	Côte d'Ivoire
Czech Republic	Czechia
Guinea Bissau	Guinea-Bissau
Hong Kong	China, Hong Kong SAR
Iran	Iran (Islamic Republic of)
Korea, Dem. People's Republic	Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Korea, Republic of	Republic of Korea
Kosovo
Lao People's Dem. Republic	Lao People's Democratic Republic
Macedonia, North	North Macedonia
Micronesia	Micronesia (Federated States of)
Moldova, Republic of	Republic of Moldova
Netherlands	Netherlands (Kingdom of the)
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic	Western Sahara
St. Lucia	Saint Lucia
St. Vincent and the Grenadines	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Sudan South	South Sudan
Taiwan	China, Taiwan Province of
Tanzania	United Republic of Tanzania
Turkey	Türkiye
United Kingdom	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic	Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)

FAO does not have values for Kosovo.

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)

IFs Countries	IHME Countries

International Labor Organization

IFs Countries	ILO Countries
Bolivia	Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
Congo, Dem. Republic of the	Congo, Democratic Republic of the
Cote D'Ivoire	Côte d'Ivoire
Czech Republic	Czechia
Grenada
Guinea Bissau	Guinea-Bissau
Hong Kong	Hong Kong, China
Iran	Iran (Islamic Republic of)
Kiribati
Korea, Dem. People's Republic	Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of)
Korea, Republic of	Republic of Korea
Kosovo
Lao People's Dem. Republic	Lao People's Democratic Republic
Macedonia, North	North Macedonia
Micronesia
Moldova, Republic of	Republic of Moldova
Palestine	Occupied Palestinian Territory
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic	Western Sahara
Seychelles
St. Lucia	Saint Lucia
St. Vincent and the Grenadines	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Sudan South	South Sudan
Taiwan	Taiwan, China
Tanzania	Tanzania, United Republic of
Turkey	Türkiye
United Kingdom	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic	Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)

Grenada, Kiribati, Kosovo, Micronesia, and Seychelles are not present in ILO.

International Monetary Funds (IMF)

IFs Countries	IMF Countries

UIS UNESCO

FIPS_CODE	IFs Country	COUNTRY_ID UIS
ZAR	Congo, Dem. Republic of the	COD
KSV	Kosovo
MON	Mongolia	MNG
WBG	Palestine	PSE
ROM	Romania	ROU
YUG	Serbia	SRB
TWN	Taiwan
TMP	Timor-Leste	TLS

Kosovo and Taiwan are not present in this dataset. This dataset is also present in IDs and not names.

World Bank

IFs Countries	World Bank Countries

World Health Organization (WHO)

IFs Countries	WHO Countries