Electronic Data Center : Data Sources for ECON 422 (Economic Forecasting)

Selected Resources for ECON 422 (Economic Forecasting)

Emory's Electronic Data Center

General Social Science Data Resources

Emory's Electronic Data Center (217 Woodruff Library)

http://einstein.library.emory.edu - The Data Center home page

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/links.shtml - The Data Freeway, a thematically-organized collection of links to on-line data sources

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/help_index.shtml - Help Pages for databases and data management

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/citation_guide.html - Guide for citation of electronic data sources

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/contact.shtml - Data Center contact information and hours

GENERAL SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA RESOURCES

ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research)
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/
The ICPSR is the largest collection of Social Science Data in the world. Topics included in the archive include: economics, government, health care, crime, education, etc. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory. The Data Center also maintains an archive of ready-to-use ICPSR datasets which are accessible via the search engine on the Data Center home page.

Fedstats
http://www.fedstats.gov/
A good starting place for statistics collected by United States government agencies.

Lexis-Nexis Statistical
Lexis-Nexis Statistical, which is available via Databases at Emory, allows patrons to search for statistics from the U.S. government and other sources and download them directly into Microsoft Excel.

U.S./DOMESTIC DATA SOURCES

Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
http://www.bea.gov/
The BEA is an excellent source for economic data at both the national and subnational (state/local) level.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
http://www.bls.gov
The BLS contains much data on employment, wages, and prices, at both the national and sub-national levels. Be warned that the website is not always easy to navigate.

Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI)
http://www.chicagofed.org/economic_research_and_data/cfnai.cfm
The CFNAI is, to quote the website, a "weighted average of 85 existing monthly indicators of national economic activity ... The 85 economic indicators that are included in the CFNAI are drawn from four broad categories of data: production and income; employment, unemployment, and hours; personal consumption and housing; and sales, orders, and inventories." Data from a precursor to the CFNAI are available at this site.

Commodity Research Bureau (CRB) Indexes
http://www.crbtrader.com/crbindex/default.asp
The Commodity Research Bureau produces various indexes of commodity prices derived from the prices of different commodities (e.g. corn, soybeans, precious metals) in different markets in the United States. Monthly data for the indexes and their components are available, with coverage extending back to the 1950's depending on the index.

Department of Energy Energy Information Administration (EIA)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/
The EIA is a very extensive source for data on energy consumption in the United States, with both annual and monthly data available. The EIA also has much international data available.

Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED II)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/
FRED II includes time-series data for variables such as GDP, interest rates, exchange rates, consumer prices, and banking. Most of the data are from the 1950's onwards, though some series extend back prior to WWII.

Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversite (OFHEO) Housing Price Index
http://www.ofheo.gov/hpi.aspx
The OFHEO Housing Price Index is a quarterly index of prices for single-family houses. Data are available for the U.S. as a whole and for individual states and regions. Data are available from 1975 onwards, varying by geographic area.

Yahoo Finance
http://finance.yahoo.com/
A convenient source of market data. The site also offers historical quotes that may be useful for time series studies.

INTERNATIONAL DATA SOURCES

Database of Political Institutions
http://go.worldbank.org/2EAGGLRZ40
This database was put together in part by Phillip Keefer at the World Bank and provides data on the political institutions and structures of different countries in the world from 1975 to 2006. Additional documentation are also available here. Please note the authors' preferred format for citing their data.

€-Coin
http://eurocoin.cepr.org/
€-Coin is an economic indicator for the Euro-zone that provides monthly estimates of GDP growth for Euro-zone countries within the European Union. In addition to the "real-time" data available at the site above, there is also an historical archive of €-Coin data.

Global Market Information Database (GMID)
http://www.portal.euromonitor.com/portal
GMID is produced by Euromonitor International and contains time-series data (1977-present) on a very wide range of economic and social indicators such as income, GDP, consumer expenditures, and population demographics. The data are available through both Excel-ready spreadsheets and .pdf reports. GMID is also accessible via Databases at Emory.

International Labour Organization
http://www.ilo.org
The ILO is the main international labor-rights advocacy group in the world and has brought together a variety of information about labor rights and working conditions internationally. You can access their databases directly at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/support/lib/dblist.htm. While most of the ILO's data are yearly/annual, some data are available in more frequent increments.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) International Financial Statistics
http://www.imfstatistics.org/imf/imfbrowser.aspx?branch=ROOT
The IFS is a standard source of statistics on various aspects of international and domestic finance. Please note that this site is restricted to the Emory community. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory. There is also a CD-ROM version of the IFS available in the Data Center.

Joint External Debt Hub (JEDH)
http://devdata.worldbank.org/sdmx/jedh/jedh_home.html
The JEDH is a very detailed site on external debt with time-series data going back to the early 1990's. The database is a joint project of the BIS, the IMF, the OECD, and the World Bank. Users can create subsets of the database and save them into Excel. This site is a replacement for the Joint BIS-IMF-OECD-WB Statistics on External Debt.

Penn World Tables
PWT is a good starting point for basic world economic data during the period 1950-2004. The most recent version of the PWT is available at http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/. An older version with coverage from 1950-1992 (and some variables not yet available in the newest version) can be found at http://datacentre.chass.utoronto.ca/pwt/.

SourceOECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
http://new.sourceoecd.org/
SourceOECD is an online service that provides full-text access to OECD studies, periodicals, and statistics from 1998 forward. Included are annuals, outlooks, policy reviews, conference proceedings, analytical reports, guidelines, working papers, all periodicals, and 27 statistical databases. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory.

Statistical Data Locator, NTU Singapore
http://www.ntu.edu.sg/lib/stat/stateuaf.htm
A data archive with links to national and international statistical agencies that distribute economic and other data.

World Bank Quarterly External Debt Statistics (QEDS)
http://go.worldbank.org/6V603CE490
The QEDS contain quarterly data on external debt, broken down by categories of debt and sector of debt (e.g. general government v. monetary authorities v. banks). Data are available back to 1998, varying by country.

World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI)
http://devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/
The World Development Indicators Website provides convenient access to nearly 600 indicators on over 200 countries. Data is generally available from 1960 forward. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory.

CD-ROM/NON-WEB DATABASES

Datastream Advance
Datastream Advance is a very good source for data on exchange rates, interest rates, prices, stocks, and various macroeconomic data. It is available on workstations in both the EDC and the Goizueta Business Library.

Eurostat Statistics DVD
The Eurostat Statistics DVD is a very comprehensive source for economic and social data for EU members at both the national and sub-national/regional level. Some of its databases also include data for countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to the DVD in the Data Center, there is also an on-line interface. More recent data from this database are also now available directly from the Eurostat website. The Eurostat interface does not cover as many years as does the DVD, but it will allow users to download data into spreadsheet formats. Please note that none of the interfaces is entirely user-friendly.

State Personal Income, 1929-2000
This CD was produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and contains much time-series data on income and employment and transfer payments at the state level. Please note that the data on the CD are not compatible with the data available at the BEA website.

A complete list of the Data Center's non-web databases is available here. The databases are accessible via the Data Center's public workstations.

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