Data Resources for Economics and Economists

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Macroeconomic and Financial Data
https://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.

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 OECD.Stat and OECD Data.

United Nations Commodity Statistics Trade Database (Comtrade)
https://comtrade.un.org/
The UN's Comtrade database is a good source for commodity-specific bilateral trade data. Users can create their own extracts of data for both value and quantity of trade using different industrial classification codes and download those extracts for later use. Comtrade now also includes data on trade in services. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory.

UNCTAD Foreign Direct Investment Statistics
https://unctadstat.unctad.org/EN/
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) maintains a database on FDI statistics, including flows, stocks, and participation in international investment-related agreements. It covers the years 1970 onward and allows users to download data into Microsoft Excel. UNCTAD's World Investment Reports are another useful source for FDI flows and stocks. UNCTAD's FDI data are part of a database on economic data more generally, including data on macroeconomic indicators, trade flows and trade restrictions, remittances, and commodity prices.

World Development Indicators (World Bank)
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712
The World Development Indicators provide convenient access to hundreds indicators on over 200 countries and territories. Data are available annually from 1960 forward, with variation across countries and indicators. The database is part of the Bank's Data Catalog of statistical databases and other data collections. There are also multiple tools available for importing WDI data directly into programs such as R and Stata.

World Economics and Politics (WEP) Dataverse
https://ncgg.princeton.edu/wep/dataverse.html
The WEP Dataverse is a joint undertaking by scholars at the University of Southern California and at Princeton. The Dataverse "provides researchers the ability to download custom datasets with information about the political and economic characteristics of countries," such as data on trade flows and policies, financial openness, central bank indepedence, regime types and political institutions, and basic socio-economic indicators. Most of the data are by country-year, but some of the data are bilateral and between countries (e.g. alliances, trade agreements, and similarity of votes in the UN General Assembly). Documentation for the data is available at https://ncgg.princeton.edu/wep/download.html. See also the International Political Economy Data Resource, which is a precursor to the WEP Dataverse.

Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)
https://dhsprogram.com/
The DHS is a project funded by the United States Agency for International Development to promote better gathering of survey data on health issues pertaining to family life and reproductive health in developing countries. Aggregated data from DHS surveys are readily accessible via the STATcompiler interface that allows for on-line visualization and for download in tabular form. Microdata files from the surveys are also available upon registration and application for access. The DHS Program also has a code library on GitHub that includes sample code to calculate common DHS indicators in R, SPSS, and Stata. The University of Minnesota's IPUMS project has also produced the IPUMS DHS collection of harmonized extracts of data from DHS surveys.

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) International
https://international.ipums.org/international/
The IPUMS International project at the University of Minnesota provides access to samples from population censuses in various countries, with the data harmonized and standardized for easier cross-national comparisons. The list of available samples is located at https://international.ipums.org/international-action/sample_details.

International Household Survey Network (IHSN)
http://www.ihsn.org/home/
The IHSN is devoted to improving "the availability, accessibility, and quality of survey data within developing countries, and to encourage the analysis and use of this data by national and international development decision makers, the research community, and other stakeholders." As part of this mission, the IHSN has developed a very useful catalog of household surveys that covers both national and international surveys. The catalog allows users to filter by country, date range, and availability, and to search through variable descriptions and question texts.

Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS)
https://www.strausscenter.org/ccaps/
The CCAPS project, which is hosted by the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at UT-Austin, is devoted to the study of the relationship between climate change and international/internal stability on the African continent. The project's research areas and themes have various data collections associated with them, such as the Social Conflict Analysis Database (SCAD), which provides event-level data on riots, coups, strikes, and other instances of social unrest, and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED), which provides event-level data on various types of armed conflict.

National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) Data Collections
https://www.start.umd.edu/data-and-tools/start-datasets
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), which is funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security, is devoted to " utilizing state-of-the-art theories, methods, and data from the social and behavioral sciences to improve the understanding of the origins, dynamics, and social and psychological impacts of terrorism." As part of its work, it has assembled data collections on topics such as individual terrorist events, the organizational behavior of ethnic groups in the Middle East and North Africa, profiles of individual perpetrators of terrorist events in the United States, public opinion in Muslim-majority countries, and profiles of individual terrorist organizations. START's Global Terrorism Database is an especially commonly-used data source. START's data collections are available via the START Terrorism Archive Dataverse.

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).

Quality of Government (QOG) Institute
https://www.gu.se/en/quality-government
The QOG Institute is hosted by members of the Department of Political Science at Göteborg University in Sweden and is devoted to "the causes, consequences and nature of 'good governance.'" The Institute has created multiple collections of data on governance: a broad collection of governance indicators that is global in coverage; a more narrow collection that focuses on social policy in wealthier countries; data from expert surveys on politicization and professionalization of public administration in individual countries, and a new data collection on perceptions of corruption in individual regions within EU members. The data are compiled from multiple sources, including the Polity Project, the Cingarelli-Richards Human Rights Data, Transparency International, Freedom House, various international organizations, and datasets produced by various academics. The QoG data are available in SPSS, Stata, and comma-delimited (.csv) formats. There are also various options for importing the data directly into R or directly into Stata.

Data Resources for SARS-CoV-2
https://guides.libraries.emory.edu/SARS_CoV2
This guide is a compilation of sources for data on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and COVID-19. The guide includes links to data on different facets of the virus and the disease it causes: cases, deaths, testing, projections, policy responses, public opinion and reactions, economic consequences, and some tools for working with data in different statistical applications. The focus is on data that are directly about the virus and the disease it causes or have been re-framed to focus on some aspect of their effects.

Education Policy and Data Center
https://www.epdc.org/
The Education Policy and Data Center provides access to education measures and indicators from a range of sources such as administrative records, household surveys, and assessment tests. Users can search for data by country, topic, or level of education.

Gender Data Portal
https://genderdata.worldbank.org/
The World Bank's Gender Data Portal "makes the latest gender statistics accessible through compelling narratives and data visualizations to improve the understanding of gender data and facilitate analyses that inform policy choices." Amongst the resources here are collections of micro- and macro-level data and indicators covering topics such as control of economic assets and financial inclusion and an extensive set of gender-themed indicators that can be downloaded in bulk or queried by country, year, and indicator.

Health, Nutrition and Population Data and Statistics
https://datatopics.worldbank.org/health/
HealthStats is "the World Bank’s comprehensive database of Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) statistics," covering topics such as reproductive health, population growth, communicable and non-communicable diseases, and health facilities. The data are accessible through various means, such as via an interface that allows for both queries and bulk downloads and via tools to break health data down by household wealth. The database is part of the Bank's Data Catalog of statistical databases and other data collections.

Millennium Challenge Corporation Evidence Platform
https://mcc.icpsr.umich.edu/
The MCC Evidence Platform provides access to data, documentation, and reports from various assessments and projects undertaken by the Millennium Challenge Corporation available for secondary use. You can search/filter the holdings by country, sector of intervention, and output type.

World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform
https://pip.worldbank.org/home
The Poverty and Inequality Platform is "the World Bank Group’s comprehensive source for the latest data on poverty, inequality, and shared prosperity. The portal allows you to explore several poverty and inequality indicators for countries and regions as well as explore countries by various income levels." The site is part of the Bank's broader collection of poverty indicators. Other data resources are available via the Bank's "Poverty and Inequality" research program, the Bank's Data Catalog, and the Bank's Microdata Library. The Bank has also created functions/commands for extracting PIP data via R and via Stata. Be warned: the World Bank tends to change addresses for websites without warning.