EcoDataOnline


This wiki page aims to build a comprehensive list of economics and finance data sources around the world. It is part of the Stubborn Mule Wiki. If you would like to help out, please send me a message to @seancarmody and I will give you access. You'll need to create a (free) pbworks account first.

 

The Best Data Repositories

 

The following sites are exceptional in some way, either in terms of the breadth of the data or the form in which the data is made available.

 

St Louis Fed's FREDĀ® (Federal Reserve Economic Data)

This is an extraordinary resourse. With over 20,000 time series, the data is made readily accessible either simply via a web browser or through programmatic interfaces. For example, the R module quantmod makes it easy to import and analyse FRED data.

 

The CIA World Factbook

Who would have thought that spies could be so helpful? As well as providing detailed profiles of individual counties, much of the data is available is world listings. For example, here is Gross Domestic Product (GDP) around the world. Unfortunately, these listings do not have simple URLs in CSV format.

 

And, now here is the rest of the list (the sites above are listed again within the appropriate category). Like any good wiki, it is a work in progress and there will be plenty of good sites missing.

 

World Data

The CIA World Factbook

OECD Stat Extracts

OECD Factbook eXplorer - graphical data explorer inspired by Gapminder

United Nations Population Information Network

Penn World Table - power parity and national income accounts for 1950-2004, expressed in to international prices

FAOSTAT - data on food and agriculture from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.

 

US Data 

St Louis Fed's FREDĀ®

NBER Data

Bureau of Labor and Statistics

Office of Budget and Management - data on US budget receipts and outlays in Excel format

Fed Stats

US Census Bureau

 

Australian Data

Unfortunately most Australia online data is in Excel format rather than CSV format.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) - data is all in Excel format

Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Statistics - data is all in Excel format

Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM) - data is all in Excel format. AOFM also provide tender data.

Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia - data is all in Excel format

Australian Automobile Association: Petrol Prices - state by state data in Excel format.

 

I need to dig through this A-Z of Australian Government sites to add to this list.

 

New Zealand Data

Reserve Bank of New Zealand

New Zealand Treasury

 

UK Data

National Statistics

Bank of England Statistical Interactive Database

 

Canadian Data

Statistics Canada

 

Market Data

Yahoo Finance - historical data available in CSV format. Accessible via quantmod in R.

Google Finance - most historical data is available in CSV format (there are some curious omissions). Accessible via quantmod in R.

OANDA.com currency data - historical data available in CSV format. Accessible via quantmod in R.

 

Miscellaneia

SIPRI Arms Transfer Database