imfweo is an R package to access and analyze the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) publications. WEO provides comprehensive analysis and forecasts of the global economy and is published twice a year - typically in April and October.
The package is designed to work seamlessly with World Bank’s International Debt Statistics (IDS) and World Development Indicators (WDI) provided through the wbids and wbwdi package, respectively. It follows the principles of the EconDataverse.
This package is a product of Teal Insights and not sponsored by or affiliated with the IMF in any way, except for the use of the WEO data.
💡 This package currently does not use the IMF Data API for several reasons: (i) the API’s SDMX format is complex and difficult to parse; (ii) leveraging the
rsdmxpackage would require releasingimfweounder the GPL license; and (iii) it’s unclear whether the API provides access to historical WEO publications.
Installation
You can install imfweo from CRAN via:
install.packages("imfweo")You can install the development version of imfweo from GitHub with:
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("teal-insights/r-imfweo")Usage
The main function weo_get() provides a simple interface to download data from the latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) publication:
library(imfweo)
weo_get()
#> # A tibble: 353,544 × 7
#> entity_name entity_id series_name units series_id year value
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <int> <dbl>
#> 1 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1980 -56.3
#> 2 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1981 -82.2
#> 3 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1982 -91.8
#> 4 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1983 -76.0
#> 5 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1984 -67.9
#> 6 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1985 -63.5
#> 7 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1986 -66.4
#> 8 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1987 -63.5
#> 9 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1988 -57.3
#> 10 World 001 Current account balance U.S. dol… BCA 1989 -83.4
#> # ℹ 353,534 more rowsNote: On the first run of each R session, the function may take a few seconds to execute as the package checks which WEO publication is currently the latest. This information is put into a cache, which is reset whenever your session restarts.
To explicitly retrieve the most recent publication metadata, use:
weo_get_latest_publication()
#> $year
#> [1] 2025
#>
#> $release
#> [1] "Spring"To fetch data from a specific publication, or to filter by country, indicator, or time range, you can use the available parameters:
weo_get(
entities = c("USA", "GBR", "DEU"),
series = "NGDP_RPCH",
start_year = 2015,
end_year = 2020,
year = 2023,
release = "Spring"
)
#> # A tibble: 792 × 7
#> entity_name entity_id series_name units series_id year value
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <int> <dbl>
#> 1 Germany DEU Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2015 288.
#> 2 Germany DEU Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2016 299.
#> 3 Germany DEU Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2017 289.
#> 4 Germany DEU Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2018 316.
#> 5 Germany DEU Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2019 318.
#> 6 Germany DEU Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2020 274.
#> 7 United Kingdom GBR Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2015 -149.
#> 8 United Kingdom GBR Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2016 -149.
#> 9 United Kingdom GBR Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2017 -96.9
#> 10 United Kingdom GBR Current account balance U.S.… BCA 2018 -117.
#> # ℹ 782 more rowsEven when filtering, the full dataset for the selected publication must be downloaded, as the WEO data is distributed in Excel format.
To explore available publications:
weo_list_publications()
#> # A tibble: 37 × 3
#> year release month
#> <int> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 2007 Spring April
#> 2 2007 Fall October
#> 3 2008 Spring April
#> 4 2008 Fall October
#> 5 2009 Spring April
#> 6 2009 Fall October
#> 7 2010 Spring April
#> 8 2010 Fall October
#> 9 2011 Spring April
#> 10 2011 Fall October
#> # ℹ 27 more rowsTo list the available entities (countries or country groups) for the latest publication:
weo_get_entities()
#> # A tibble: 209 × 2
#> entity_id entity_name
#> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 510 ASEAN-5
#> 2 110 Advanced economies
#> 3 AFG Afghanistan
#> 4 ALB Albania
#> 5 DZA Algeria
#> 6 AND Andorra
#> 7 AGO Angola
#> 8 ATG Antigua and Barbuda
#> 9 ARG Argentina
#> 10 ARM Armenia
#> # ℹ 199 more rowsTo list the available data series:
weo_get_series()
#> # A tibble: 150 × 3
#> series_id series_name units
#> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 BCA Current account balance U.S. dollars
#> 2 BCA_NGDPD Current account balance Percent of GDP
#> 3 BF Financial account balance U.S. dollars
#> 4 BFD Direct investment, net U.S. dollars
#> 5 BFF Financial derivatives, net U.S. dollars
#> 6 BFO Other investment, net U.S. dollars
#> 7 BFP Portfolio investment, net U.S. dollars
#> 8 BFRA Change in reserves U.S. dollars
#> 9 BM Imports of goods and services U.S. dollars
#> 10 BX Exports of goods and services U.S. dollars
#> # ℹ 140 more rowsContributing
Contributions to imfweo are welcome! If you’d like to contribute, please follow these steps:
- Create an issue: Before making changes, create an issue describing the bug or feature you’re addressing.
- Fork the repository: After receiving supportive feedback from the package authors, fork the repository to your GitHub account.
- Create a branch: Create a branch for your changes with a descriptive name.
- Make your changes: Implement your bug fix or feature.
- Test your changes: Run tests to ensure your changes don’t break existing functionality.
- Submit a pull request: Push your changes to your fork and submit a pull request to the main repository.