Abstract:
This paper introduces the Data Collection Task Force of the South-East European Monetary History Network (SEEMHN DCTF) and its first result. Good policy making should be grounded on good data. To this end, the SEEMHN DCTF works since 2006 towards establishing a SEE macro history database of 19th and 20th century key financial and monetary statistics. All task force members acknowledge that this goal could only be achieved by joining forces and through the exchange of knowledge and experience. Therefore, the SEEMHN DCTF involved cooperation between representatives from all SEE national central banks and scholars who specialise in different fields, geographical regions and time periods. Its first result concerns a new statistics publication entitled South-Eastern European Monetary and Economic Statistics from the Nineteenth Century to World War II. It contains a newly compiled, built and harmonised dataset of long-run key monetary and macroeconomic time series. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, we briefly present this new statistical database. Second, we discuss techniques and technology followed in the data compilation and building process, as well as archives and published sources used. Third, we briefly present the new data project on which the SEEMHN will keep working in the near future.