Data Useful for Classroom Discussions

• Xist presents international comparison data in a very user friendly fashion.
• For short series of recent macro data, you might see the White House briefing room.
• Don't skip the Statistical Abstracts of the US: online data include Statistics in Brief and Frequently Requested Tables.
• FedStats offers links to a tremendous amount of U.S. data.
• The FY 1999 Federal Budget
• Guide to the Federal Budget
• UC Berkeley offers a national budget simulation
• The EPI Data Zone
• AU subscribes to the Federal Government database, Stat.USA (anyone connecting to STAT-USA from a computer with an AU IP address may access any of the STAT-USA databases; visit the AU Library reference desk for more details).
• biz/ed offers much interesting data
• The CIA's World Fact Book has considerable economic information, and is in an easily searched online form.
• The National Debt Clock
• The CBO's Economic and Budget Outlook
• CPI data and background.
• Daily Exchange Rate
• The New York Fed provides some current economic data and current financial data
• The FRB Atlanta offers an exchange rate index
• Global Financial Data offers some interesting macro time series for free and many more for a fee.
• The Dismal Scientist provides free economic data, analysis, and forecasts covering both a national and regional aspects of the U.S. economy. Topics include: coverage of major economic indicators historical and forecast data regional economic data, for states and metros industry data analysis of current, vital economic topics The site also provides a quick summary of major economic releases. The Dismal Scientist also provides tools for ranking all 50 states and over 250 metro areas on more than 100 distinct categories. Xavier Sala-i-Martin's data

• The Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Contains many macro series. Includes Divisia monetary aggregate data for the US.
• USinfostore offers time series of their “top 150” data series for free.
• Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) offers demographic and health indicators data from developing countries, all directly downloadable, in a variety of formats. You must register, but the data are free.
• Pacific Exchange Rate Service: daily exchange rate data
• The Data Archive for the Journal of Applied Econometrics is the model for what all empirical and quantitative economics journals should be doing, in terms of making data from their published papers available for replication. User friendly and easily accessible.
• The Journal of Economic and Business Statistics archive also pursues this noble goal.
• The World Bank now offers a variety of data related to growth research, including data used in a number of well known published articles.
• The Penn World Tables have their origins in the well known series of books by Irving Kravis, Alan Heston, and Robert Summers at the University of Pennsylvania.
• The QM&RBC Data Online links to some interesting macro data.
• The Business and Economic Statistics (B&E) Section of the American Statistical Association (ASA) links to various official data sources; see B&E DataLinks.
• Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Bank Condition and Income Database
• Ohio State University's Financial Data Finder
• The International Divisia Database, maintained on a Cray at the University of Mississippi includes an international database of Divisia monetary aggregates and dual user costs for countries including: Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, England, Italy, Korea, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland, and the US.
• For other economic data sources, BLS Data, Commerce Department Data, Federal Reserve Board Home Page, Federal Reserve Bank Home Pages, Federal Reserve Board Data, Mexican Data, more Mexican data, Other Non-U.S. Data, Economics Data Gophers, and Financial Market Data. The Citibase database is unfortunately far from free. For a general source of links to data at all US government databases, see the GovBot Database.
• NBER Macro History Database
• Electronic Data Sources (Rutgers)
• Penn Data Sets
• National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
• General Accounting Office
• The Institute for Fiscal Studies
• Data Home Page of BizEd Net
• Journal of Applied Econometricts Data Archive
• Economics (SHSU Network Access Initiative Project)
• Federal Deposit Insurance Cooporation (FDIC)
• EconData
• Economic Bulletin Board (U.S. Department of Commerce)
• Economics Library
• Federal Reserve (Board of Governors)
• Gross State Product Tables; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
• StatLib Server
• The Cyberchronicle of Political Economy (COPE)
• Business Sources on the Net
• Business and economic statistics
• The USDA Economics and Statistics System (Cornell University) contains nearly 300 reports and datasets from the economics agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most data sets are in spreadsheet format and include time-series data that are updated yearly.
• New England Economic Data Center
• U.S. Government Printing Office
• INDEC
• ESRC Research Programme
• U.S. Government Printing Office Web Site
• World Bank
• Census Bureau

• The LatinFocus web page links to data and analysis for economics and finance professionals.
• Data for Argentina
• Japanese Macro-Economic Data
• The Resource Centre for Access to Data on Europe(r7cade) now offers Eurostat, ILO and UNESCO statistics (for a fee).
• Turkish Economics Page
• NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)
• Mexico

[phone] 202-885-3770
[fax] 202-885-3790
econ@american.edu

Copyright © American University. All rights reserved.
Updated: 10/15/2004