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Data Resources and Support

Support for locating and working with datasets, statistical information, and geographic data.

Non-Web Data Resources

We also have a wide variety of resources available in the Center for Digital Scholarship. These resources are usually CD-ROM databases accessible via the Center's public workstations. In some cases, the CD databases also have on-line counterparts, but the CD versions of the databases are generally more user-friendly than are their on-line counterparts.

Banks Cross-National Time Series Data Archive (CNTS) -- The Banks CNTS contains time-series data on a variety of economic, political, and social topics (e.g. GDP, regime type, population, infrastructure). A complete list of variables is available here. The temporal coverage is from 1815 onward, varying by country and topic. The geographic coverage is global. The data include some supplementary events-level data on individual events that are aggregated to produce specific variables in the time-series data. We cannot distribute the dataset in its entirety to users but can help users create subsets of countries, years, and variables which they can take with them for use in their analysis.

Datastream -- Datastream is a very comprehensive source for data on exchange rates, interest rates, prices, stocks, and various other macroeconomic and microeconomic data. It is available on workstations in Center for Digital Scholarship. Some Datastream content (equities, macroeconomic indicators, futures, and commodity prices) are also available via WRDS (https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/pages/). Guides for Datastream are available via Stanford University and via Erasmus University. To use Datastream, please contact Dr. Robert O'Reilly.

International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Local Government Survey Data Sets -- The Data Center has several datasets from ICMA's collection of surveys of local governments. These surveys cover various topics such as form/structure of local governments, barriers to local economic development, and funding for homeland security programs. The specific datasets in the EDC's collections are the Municipal Form of Governments surveys (1996, 2001, 2006), the County Form of Governments surveys (1997, 2002), the Economic Development surveys (1999, 2004), and the Homeland Security survey (2005).