CHELEM contains annual data stretching back over the long term, to 1960 or 1967, depending on the series. Its construction requires persistent work aimed at continually improving the database. Such work has to take into account changes in technology, the profound transformations of the world economy, as well as modifications introduced "upstream" by the national or international sources of statistics. The present description of CHELEM is thus based on its current state, and takes into account innovations that have been made. CHELEM is made up of three databases which are linked to each other through the use of a common nomenclature or classification system. At a geographical level, the CHELEM nomenclature covers the world exhaustively, using 94 elementary zones. These may be broken down as follows:
F
82 major countries, which represent 97% of international trade and 98% of world output;
F12 other zones that draw together the remaining countries.
The world can be broken in 3 different ways, with a three-fold hierarchy:
- a hierarchic list of 34 traditional zones (32 + non-ventilated + world) available for the whole period
- a list of 96 zones (94 + non-ventilated + world) available for 1993 onwards, detailing the countries resulting for the split of Yugoslavia, USSR and Czechoslovakia
- a list of 82 zones (80 + non-ventilated + world) available for the whole period but keeping Yugoslavia, USSR and Czechoslovakia unsplitted.
Precalculated aggregates (mettre à jour aggregates.htm) (OECD, Euro Zone, APEC, ALENA, EU and so on) are available, and the user can compute his/her own aggregates.
CHELEM-GDP and CHELEM-BAL, more detailed geographically than CHELEM-INT, contain data for about 200 countries. Thus the three databases have in common 82 individualized countries (mettre à jour 82countries.htm) (86 on the whole if Yugoslavia, USSR and Czechoslovakia are taken into account, as well as East Germany before the reunification). The following countries have been added since the former release: Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay in Latin America, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Cameroon, Ivory Cost and Kenya in Middle-East and Africa, Bengladesh, Sri Lanka and Vietnam in Asia.
