Databases

We are making our own selection of Databases that we consider to be most useful for economic practitioners and aficionados. We have divided these electronic resources into the relevant sections. Please note that the resources focused on Latin America and the Caribbean are marked with an asterisk. We welcome your feedback on these selections, and on the pros and cons of each site. 

Education and Labor  
Energy and Climate Change  
Gender and Diversity  
General Interest  
Housing  
Income Inequality, Poverty and Economic Welfare  
International Trade  
Macroeconomics and Finance  
Political Economy  
Privatizations, Reforms and Regulation  

Databases

Education and Labor

  • *Barro-Lee Educational Attainment Dataset Data on educational attainment for 1950-2010 by 5-year age group, 15 years and over and 25 years and over.
  • *International Labour Organization - Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM) Is a database of country-level data on 18 key indicators of the labor market from 1980. It offers the latest ILO world and regional estimates of employment and unemployment indicators, as well as basic analytical tools.
  • ILOSTAT Database This new ILO database of labour statistics provides multiple datasets with annual and infra-annual labour market statistics for over 100 indicators and 230 countries, areas and territories.
  • *The Learning Curve This report, published by Pearson and written by the Economist Intelligence Unit, is part of a wide-ranging programme of quantitative and qualitative analysis that seeks to further the understanding of what leads to successful educational outcomes – both economic and social. It outlines the main findings from analysis of a large body of internationally comparable education data

Energy and Climate Change

  • World Energy Outlook Is an annual report that presents analytical insights into trends in energy markets and what they mean for energy security, environmental protection and economic development. It sets out updated projections of energy demand, production, trade, investment and carbon-dioxide emissions, broken down by country, fuel and sector, to 2035.

Gender and Diversity 

  • *Indigenous Legislation DataBank This databank, collected by the World Bank, contains information on indigenous legislation classified by country and by theme for all countries of Latin America. There are 20 themes and their respective subthemes, covering from cultural diversity, identification criteria and language to land and territories, economic rights and civil registry.

General Interest

  • *CepalStat Is the official database of CEPAL, which contains country-level data for the Latin American and Caribbean countries and territories, covering: Demographic and Social Statistics and Indicators; Economic Statistics and Indicators; Environmental Statistics and Indicators; Multi-domain Statistics and Indicators.
  • Google Public Data Provides public data from a range of international organizations and academic institutions including the World Bank, OECD, Eurostat and many others. Data can be displayed as line graphs, bar graphs, cross sectional plots or on maps. As the charts and maps animate over time, it makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.
  • MOxLAD (por sus siglas en inglés) es una base de datos que recoge indicadores económicos y sociales de América Latina desde 1870 hasta 2010. Esta base cubre veinte países de la región e incluye variables en nueve grandes áreas: población y demografía, mercado de trabajo, industria, infraestructura de transportes y comunicaciones, comercio exterior, finanzas, cuentas nacionales, índices de precios al consumidor y al por mayor, e indices de precios de bienes de exportación.
  • *World dataBank DataBank is an analysis and visualisation tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics produced by the World Bank. Besides getting access to the databases, You can create your own queries, generate tables, charts and maps and easily save, embed and share them.

Housing

  • UN-Habitat Urban Indicators Urban indicators, produced by UN-Habitat, are a set of indicators regularly collected in a sample of cities worldwide in order to report on progress in the twenty key areas of the Habitat Agenda at the city level. Data collection is conducted through local and national urban observatories as well as through selected regional institutions.

Income Inequality, Poverty and Economic Welfare

  • Gallup World Gallup conducts public opinion surveys in more than 150 countries worldwide. The frequency varies from daily in the U.S. to yearly in most of the developing world, including Latin America and the Caribbean. This page gives information from the surveys and from Gallup’s own analysis and news sources.
  • *Human Development Reports Presents annually the Human Development Index (HDI) and other composite indices that are widely used as yardsticks of social and human development and inform social policies worldwide.
  • *Panorama Social de América Latina Este es el informe anual de la CEPAL sobre la situación social en América Latina y el Caribe, en el cual se analizan las tendencias de la pobreza, la desigualdad, los mercados laborales, la educación, la salud, el gasto social. Contiene bases de datos anuales para cientos de variables sociales.
  • *Sociómetro-BID Is a diverse dataset of social indicators designed to capture social conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The indicators are derived from national household survey data, covering 21 countries from 1990 to 2009. The database includes tailor-made indicators in five areas: demographics, education, labor market, housing, and income, disaggregated by gender, geographic residence, education, income quintile, ethnicity and race (when available).
  • The World Top Incomes Database The world top incomes database aims to providing convenient on line access to all the existent series of the distribution of top incomes using tax data. It contains top income share time series over the long-run for more than twenty countries to date. Despite the database's name, it also aims to offering information on the distribution of earnings and the distribution of wealth.

International Trade

  • Balance of Payments Statistics (BOPS) Manejada por el Fondo Monetario Internacional, es la fuente internacionalmente aceptada de las estadísticas (anuales, por países) de balanza de pagos, que comprenden comercio internacional de bienes y servicios, transferencias, balanza en cuenta corriente, inversión extranjera, movimientos financieros, balanza de capitales y reservas internacionales.
  • *DataIntal Manejada por el BID, DataIntal contiene información detallada de integración y comercio en América Latina y el Caribe, especialmente sobre acuerdos regionales de comercio (ARC). Incluye bases de datos y herramientas prácticas útiles para la comprensión, análisis y aprovechamiento de los acuerdos comerciales suscriptos en la región con socios regionales o extrarregionales. Permite hacer consultas con una desagregación de hasta 10 dígitos en las clasificaciones de comercio internacional.
  • *Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) Contains annual, quarterly and monthly time series on merchandise export and import data for 187 countries, as well as world trade flow aggregates between major regions from 1981 to 2012.
  • *Foreign Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean This report, produced by CEPAL, provides a quantitative overview of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and examines these capital flows by destination economic sector and geographical area of origin.
  • *INTradeBID Sponsored by the IDB, INTradeBID offers databases, models and tools to monitor and assess the impact of integration and trade. This portal provides public access to these data and tools. INTradeBID includes an innovative database of product-level rules of origin, codified at the maximum level of detail.
  • The Atlas of Economic Complexity is a powerful interactive tool that enables users to visualize a country’s total trade, track how these dynamics change over time and explore growth opportunities for more than a hundred countries worldwide.

Macroeconomics and Finance

  • Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)'s Country Reports This (paid) service by the Economist Intelligence Unit, provides a short- to medium-term economic and political forecast for a country as well as analysis of key developments and major policies. The service offers forecasts of political, policy and economic conditions to help understand what is happening in a country and how the country will look in the future. Subscribers receive a regular forecast report as well as frequently published articles on recent events that may impact our forecast.
  • *EIU's Country Data This comprehensive dataset by the Economist Intelligence Unit includes a full suite of up to 320 key economic indicators for a country. It includes both long-term historical data and long-term forecast data.
  • Financial Soundness Indicators (FSIs) Developed by the IMF, aim at supporting macroprudential analysis and assessing strengths and vulnerabilities of financial systems. The website disseminates data and metadata on selected FSIs provided by participating countries.
  • International Financial Statistics (IFS) Produced by the International Monetary Fund, the IFS offers approximately 32,000 time series covering more than 200 countries starting in 1948. Includes exchange rates, Fund accounts and the main global and country economic indicators.
  • *Latin America and Caribbean Macro Watch (LMW) Base de datos del Departamento de Investigación del BID, contiene series de variables macroeconómicas para los países de América Latina y el Caribe procesadas de forma estandarizada para facilitar el análisis macroeconómico. Incluye variables sobre actividad económica, empleo, precios, salarios, cuentas fiscales, deuda pública, cuentas externas, dinero, banca y mercados financieros.
  • Penn World Table Produced by the University of Pennsylvania, provides purchasing power parity and national income accounts converted to international prices for 189 countries/territories for some or all of the years 1950-2010.
  • Revela Is a free Web-based monthly service on inflation and growth expectations in Latin America. REVELA's Web site offers an up-to-date report and a database with historical information. This service compiles data from the expectations surveys of eight Latin American countries with inflation-targeting regimes.
  • World Bank Public Sector Debt Statistics The Public Sector Debt Statistics (PSD) database, jointly developed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, brings together detailed quarterly public sector debt data of selected countries, initially mainly developing /emerging market economies.
  • *World Economic Outlook The World Economic Outlook (WEO) database, produced by the International Monetary Fund, contains selected macroeconomic data series from the statistical appendix of the World Economic Outlook report, which presents the IMF staff's analysis and projections of economic developments at the global level, in major country groups and in many individual countries. Useful for data on national accounts, inflation, unemployment rates, balance of payments, fiscal indicators, trade for countries and country groups (aggregates), and commodity prices whose data are reported by the IMF. Data are available from 1980 to the present, and projections are given for the next two years. Additionally, medium-term projections are available for selected indicators.

Political Economy

  • *Database of Political Institutions Led by Philip Keefer at the World Bank, this is a large cross-country database on political institutions. It provides detailed information about elections, electoral rules, type of political system, the extent of military influence on government, measures of tenure, stability, and checks and balances, party composition, identification of parties with the government coalition or the opposition, and fragmentation of opposition and government parties in legislatures, among many others.
  • *DataGov Run by the Inter-American Development Bank, DataGov provides a user-friendly interface for accessing most of the publicly available indicators related to governance. The interactive tool permits users to easily produce cross-national comparative and time series graphs and tables for immediate printing or for export to standard office software. It contains approximately 800 governance indicators for a global sample of countries whose coverage depends on the source.
  • *Doing Business In this dataset, produced annually since 2003 by the IFC and the World Bank, economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, meaning the extent to which the regulatory environment is conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. Rankings are based on 10 topics, made up of a variety of indicators, giving equal weight to each topic.
  • Worldwide Governance Indicators This dataset, administered by the World Bank, contains aggregate and individual governance indicators for 213 economies over the period 1996–2010, for six dimensions of governance: Voice and Accountability; Political Stability and Absence of Violence; Government Effectiveness; Regulatory Quality; Rule of Law; Control of Corruption.

Privatizations, Reforms and Regulation

  • *Private Participation in Infrastructure Database Maintained by the World Bank, the Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) Project Database has data on over 6,000 infrastructure projects in 139 low- and middle-income countries. The database is the leading source of PPI trends in the developing world, covering projects in the energy, telecommunications, transport, and water and sewerage sectors.
  • *Structural Reform in Latin America Contiene índices de reforma estructural de 19 países de América Latina y el Caribe para el período 1985-2009, y la información de base utilizada para producirlos. Cubre las siguientes áreas: comercio internacional, sector financiero, tributación, privatizaciones, mercado laboral.

 

 

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