harmonize_pc8 {harmonizer}

Harmonization of PC8 product codes

Description

Provides a dataframe which contains all PC8 product codes and their history in the demanded time period, as well as harmonized PC8plus code, harmonized HS6plus code and BEC classification.

Usage

harmonize_pc8(b, e, historymatrix = NULL, harmonize.to = "e",
              HS6breaks = c(1992, 1996, 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017),
              progress = TRUE)

Arguments

b

first year of interest

e

last year of interest

historymatrix

History matrix of PC8 product codes. Provided by history_matrix_pc8(). By default NULL; the function computes the needed harmonized data.

harmonize.to

Defines which year for harmonization is used. It may take the following values:

• "e", harmonizes product codes towards year e

• "b", harmonizes product codes towards year b

HS6breaks

Vector of years, where HS6 codes where changed.

progress

logical, determines whether progress is printed in console or not.

Value

A data frame that contains all PC8 product codes and their history, harmonized PC8plus codes, harmonized HS6plus codes, and BEC classification. The 'plus-codes' are the main outcome of the function. They provide harmonized information of the product codes, i.e. comparable codes. Every harmonization refers to the last year of interest. The following table offers an overview of all provided variables.

Variable	Explanation
PC8_xxxx	character; a specific PC8 code in a given year
PC8plus	character; the harmonization code for PC8, which refers to the last/first year of the time period
HS6plus	character; the harmonization code of HS6, which refers to the last/first year of the time period
BEC	character; provides the BEC classification at a high aggregation level (1 digit)
BEC_agr	character; provides the BEC classification at a lower aggregation level (up to 3 digits)
SNA	character; provides information if the code is classified as consumption, capital or intermediate good in BEC
flag	numeric; integer from 0 to 3; 1 indicates that this code remained the same in notation over the whole time period but was split or merged in addition; 2 indicates that this code is either new or was dropped during the period of interest; 3 indicates the code had at least one simple change, but is not associated with a family
flagyear	numeric; indicates the first year in which the flag was set

Examples

myharmonization <- harmonize_pc8(b = 2009, e = 2011)

mydata <- history_matrix_pc8(b = 2015, e = 2017)
myharmonization <- harmonize_pc8(b = 2015, e = 2017,
                                 historymatrix = mydata)