Date of release: 26 January 2010

Any questions or comments should be sent by email to sti.contact@oecd.org, mentioning the word "STAN INDICATORS" in the title of the message.

STAN INDICATORS belong to the STAN family datasets.

They are primarily drawn from STAN Database for Structural Analysis (STAN), but also from STAN Bilateral Trade Database (BTD) and STAN Research & Development Expenditures in Industry (ANBERD).

STAN Indicators are compiled to respond to the needs of analysts and researchers interested in measuring economic performance and structural changes. They also complement the OECD publications, Science Technology and Industry Scoreboard and Economic Globalisation Indicators.

In this edition, STAN Indicators consist of 35 measures related to the production and employment structure, the labour productivity and labour costs, the investment, the business research and development expenditures and the international trade performance.

The underlying measures used for calculations are:

- Values of exports and imports of goods, at current prices from STAN Bilateral Trade Database

- Production, intermediate consumption, value added, labour compensation, gross fixed capital formation, at current prices from STAN Database for Structural Analysis

- Value added volumes and employment from STAN Database for Structural Analysis

- Research & Development expenditures, at current prices from STAN R&D Expenditure in Industry

Most of STAN Indicators are presented for all OECD countries and a certain number of zones (i.e. country groups) such as the G7, the EUs, etc.
The composition of these groups varies according to the indicators in order to optimise the industry and period coverage.

Country groups are not based on weighted averages.

STAN Indicators cover the period 1970-2008, although the time-coverage may vary considerably across countries /zones and indicators. Indicators are provided for a wide range of economic activities (according to an ISIC Rev.3 based hierarchy) compatible with the list in the underlying STAN Database.

The following notation is used in the presentation of the definitions of indicators:

• The underlying data (i.e. production, exports and imports), used for trade indicators, were first converted to US dollars using exchange rates.
• The underlying data (i.e. production, business enterprise R&D, value added, gross fixed capital formation and labour compensation), used for the indicators of industrial composition, research and development, employment and productivity, and investment were first converted to US dollars using purchasing power parities for total GDP (PPPs).
• The exchange rates and purchasing power parities are extracted from OECD's System of National Accounts database (SNA).  They are used for converting the countries' raw data before aggregation to the country groups.