Skip to Main Content

Data Resources for Economic Forecasting (ECON 422)

Sources for Monthly/Quarterly Economic Indicators

International Data Sources

Bank for International Settlements (BIS)
https://www.bis.org/statistics/index.htm
The Bank for International Settlements collects and distributes data on topics such as cross-border lending, exchange rates, and debt positions. The BIS also has a collection of data on property prices in 54 countries.

€-Coin
https://www.bancaditalia.it/statistiche/tematiche/indicatori/indicatore-euro-coin/index.html
€-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.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Macroeconomic and Financial Data
http://data.imf.org/
The IMF's data library covers topics such as investment flows, monetary aggregates, economic output, commodity prices, exchange rates, public finances, financial institutions and markets, and both public and private debt. The available databases include the Balance of Payments Statistics, the Direction of Trade Statistics, the Government Finance Statistics, and the International Financial Statistics. The Fund also has a data portal at https://www.imf.org/en/Data for access to other IMF data collections and sites.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Primary Commodity Prices
https://www.imf.org/en/Research/commodity-prices
The IMF publishes monthly reviews on commodity prices and price forecasts. As part of this program, the Fund makes available a collection of monthly prices and price indices for various types of commodities.

NASDAQ Data/Quandl
https://data.nasdaq.com/
NASDAQ Data (formerly known as Quandl) is a data-aggregation site that provides access to roughly 7,000,000 indicators taken from multiple open, publicly-available sources such as government agencies (domestic and foreign) and international organizations. Note that Quandl classifies individual indicators as individual datasets. There are also tools to read datasets into various applications such as Excel and R and Stata.

OECD iLibrary (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/
The OECD iLibrary is an online interface that provides full-text access to OECD studies, periodicals, and the OECD.Stat collection of statistical databases. The topical range of the iLibrary is considerable and covers areas such as agricultural policies, environmental indicators, social expenditures, labour markets, national accounts, foreign trade and FDI, and various industry-level data. While its focus is on wealthier developed countries, the iLibrary also includes OECD reports and publications on selected non-member countries such as the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. OECD iLibrary is also accessible via Databases at Emory. For direct access to OECD statistical databases and sites, you can also go to the OECD Data Explorer and OECD Data.

Political Risk Services (PRS) Group Data
https://guides.libraries.emory.edu/main/Data_Services/Risk_Data
The Data Center's holdings include data resources from the PRS Group and other sources that measure "risk" in the form of political (in)stability and institutional quality (e.g. levels of corruption). The data are available in monthly increments for 1984 through July of 2023.

World Bank Global Economic Monitor (GEM)
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037798
The World Bank's Global Economic Monitor "provides high frequency indicators on economic trends, economic, financial and commodity data, and growth and commodity forecasts," to quote the website. Data are available from 1990 forward in daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual increments (with variation across countries and indicators). The database is part of the Bank's Data Catalog of statistical databases and other data collections. The GEM includes a special section on historic commodity prices.