Mask with WDI to get data from several countries

1

hello all

I am successfully downloading inflation from WDI with rdb("WB","WDI","A-FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG-USA") but am unable to figure out how to use a mask to get inflation for all (or several) countries. rdb("WB","WDI","A-FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG-.") or rdb("WB","WDI","A-FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG-USA+DEU") will not work. And I tried every combination I could think of. I must be missing something incredibly stupid, but if anybody knows, much appreciated.

best, jack

2

Hey Jack,

just a fellow user, so I cannot be sure that this works but at least on the Matlab fetcher documentation the World Bank is not part of the providers that accept masks, here is the list:

  • BIS
  • ECB
  • Eurostat
  • FED
  • IMF
  • IMF-WEO
  • INSEE
  • OECD
  • WTO

Otherwise, no idea if this works but have you tried

rdb("WB","WDI","A-FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG-USA+ZG-DEU")
or
rdb("WB","WDI","A-FP.CPI.TOTL..")
It seems ZG is part of the country name, is it not?

3

Hi all,

Sorry for the delay, and thanks for your question.

After looking at https://db.nomics.world/WB/WDI/A-FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG-USA, I noticed that some dimension codes of WB/WDI include dots (.), which prevents from using masks!

image
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Here ZG is not part of the country code, but of the “Inflation, c…”.

Moreover, as dots are part of some dimension codes, the author of wb-fetcher chose to separate dimensions using a dash (-) instead of a dot.

In short: it is not possible to use masks with WB/WDI.

However, you may use another form of calling rdb consisting in passing the dimensions as JSON. As I’m not a R user, I didn’t try it, but inferred the following line from the PDF manual of rdbnomics:

df <- rdb("WB", "WDI", dimensions = '{"frequency":["A"],"indicator":["FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG"]}')

As the “country” dimension is not set, all the countries should be returned.

Here is a link to the web API of DBnomics doing the same thing (I’ve set observations=0 to avoid flooding your connection, but feel free to enable them if needed):

https://api.db.nomics.world/v22/series/WB/WDI?observations=0&dimensions={"frequency":["A"],"indicator":["FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG"]}