Economics Data sets available free on the Web

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Compiled by John Sloman, Economics Network Last updated 28^th June 2005

Here are some links that you may find useful for accessing statistics and other information. Data links that require registration or subscription are on a separate page along with pointers

1. National Statistics

National Statistics (formerly ONS) data sets are now freely available. By visiting a part of the site called 'Time Series Data' (at the URL below), you can access all the tables from the publications we all know: Economic Trends (monthly and Annual Supplement), the Blue Book, the Pink Book, Financial Statistics, etc.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/TSDIntro.asp

On entering the site you are given two main options. The first is to Access Individual Series. If you opt for this, a panel will be displayed. Having selected the publication (e.g. Economic Trends), you then have to select the table; then the series; and then the time period. This will involve clicking on 'Go' several times.

The second option is to download an entire release (e.g. of Economic Trends). If you opt for this, then you have a choice of downloading it in a simple zipped text file. This is not easy to use. The alternative is to download it into Navidata® 3.1. This software makes it easy to transform or graph series. You can use it to compose tables from a number of different series. Download the software from:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/tsdnavidata.asp

Once you have Navidata® 3.1 on your PC, your downloaded series can be unzipped into the Navidata folder. You then use Navidata to construct the tables or graphs that you want.

A step-by-step guide on using Time Series Data is at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/tsdhelp.asp

If you know the four-digit code for a series (which you will find at the top of each column in the paper publications) or in the lists from each publication in the panel in Time Series Data, you can call up the series by going into 'Advanced Search' and entering the code in the 'Search For' box and selecting 'Time Series (using ID)' in the 'Scope of Search' box. This then lists the publications in which the series occurs (with links to the series).

Other well-known publications are available as complete PDF documents, many with links included that allow you to download an Excel file of the data. Series in PDF include: the Blue Book, the Pink Book, Economic Trends (monthly and annual supplement), Labour Market Trends, Scottish Economic Statistics, New Earnings Survey, Family Spending, Social Trends, Regional Trends, Agriculture in the United Kingdom, the Annual Abstract and the Monthly Digest of Statistics (but not Financial Statistics). The available PDF documents can be found on the 'Virtual Bookshelf' part of the site at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/OnlineProducts/default.asp

New releases can be downloaded from:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/press_release/currentreleases.asp

Latest economic indicators can be downloaded from:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/instantfigures.asp

2. Bank of England Statistical Interactive Database

The Bank of England publishes a large range of banking, monetary and financial statistics in its Statistical Interactive Database. There are two easy ways of accessing the statistics in the database. The first is by category of table using the following link:

http://213.225.136.206/mfsd/iadb/BankStats.asp?Travel=NIx

First you click on a category (e.g. Money and lending); then select a series (e.g. M0); then select the form and frequency of the series (e.g. 12 month percentage growth rate, seasonally adjusted); then the date range; then the form to view the table. The available forms are HTML, XML, Excel and CSV.

The second method is to use the A to Z listing using the following link:

http://213.225.136.206/mfsd/iadb/AtoZ.asp?Travel=NIx

First you select a subject (e.g. M4); then a particular series (e.g. LPMAUYM); then, after clicking on 'show data' at the bottom of the screen, select the date range and the form to view the table. Again the available forms are HTML, XML, Excel and CSV.

3. The Treasury

The Treasury site is also a very useful source of UK data. The main site can be accessed via the following link. The Economic Data and Tools and the Budget sections are particularly useful.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/

In the Economic Data and Tools section you will find Latest Economic Indicators.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Economic_Data_and_Tools/data_index.cfm

Apart from giving you recent data releases, it also contains the Pocket Data Bank. This is a very useful monthly publication that downloads as an Excel Workbook file, with 28 tables in separate spreadsheets. It contains time- series data for a range of national and international indicators, going back, in most cases, to 1980.

4. European Central Bank Statistics

On the ECB site you will find a statistical section containing a number of series. The index can be accessed via the following link:

http://www.ecb.int/stats/html/index.en.html

The Monthly Bulletin and Annual Report are particularly useful.

http://www.ecb.int/pub/mb/html/index.en.html

http://www.ecb.int/pub/annual/html/index.en.html

5. European Economy

The European Economy supplements, with which you are probably familiar in hard-copy form, can be downloaded from the Europa portal site. They are contained in the Economic and Financial Affairs Directorate site (ECFIN DG). The home page of the directorate is:

http://europa.eu.int/comm/economy_finance/​publications/europeaneconomy_en.htm

6-monthly forecasts

By clicking on the following link, you will arrive at the 6-monthly forecasts for the EU15 countries, plus the USA and Japan. To download the document (in PDF) you will need to click in the tiny box. Apart from containing a comprehensive verbal economic report (plus tables) of the EU as a whole and each of the 15 countries, there is a comprehensive statistical annex with 61 tables of time series data, plus forecasts for the next two years.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/economy_finance/​publications/european_economy/forecasts_en.htm

Annual Review

The EU Economy Annual Review can also be accessed from this site. This contains a massive statistical annex, containing 96 tables, with data for each of the EU15 countries, the EU15 and euro countries as a whole and the USA and Japan. It can be accessed at:

http://europa.eu.int/comm/economy_finance/​publications/the_eu_economy_review_en.htm

(Note that, with large PDF files such as this, it is much quicker to save the file first and then to open it in the Adobe Acrobat Reader. To save the file, right click in the little box and go to Save Target As... and then choose your folder and file name.)

European Economy Statistical Annex

The Statistical Annex of the Annual Review is updated six-monthly and this appendix on its own can be downloaded as a PDF file from the following:

http://europa.eu.int/comm/economy_finance/​publications/statistical_en.htm

When you have selected the latest six-monthly release, again click (or right click to save) in the box.

Business and Consumer Surveys

The European Economy site also contains monthly business and consumer surveys. There is also a set of longer time series, which you can download as 7 zipped Excel files, one for each type of indicator (economic sentiment, industry, consumer, construction, retail trade, services, investment). The series give data from 1985, both monthly and quarterly. There is a large range of sentiment indicators in each file. See the Index in the first workbook of each file for the meaning of the codes used in the tables. The tables give indicators for each of the EU countries, for the eurozone and for the EU as a whole. You will find all these at:

http://europa.eu.int/comm/economy_finance/​indicators/businessandconsumersurveys_en.htm

6. OECD Statistics Portal (including OECD Economic Outlook)

On this site you will find a whole range of statistics for each of the 30 OECD countries, the EU15, the euro area and the OECD as a whole. The statistics are arranged by topic group, including national Accounts, Finance, Agriculture, Development, International Trade, Labour, Prices, Public Management and Short-term Economic Statistics.

http://www.oecd.org/statsportal/​0,2639,en_2825_293564_1_1_1_1_1,00.html

From the above page you can also link to the OECD Economic Outlook. This six-monthly publication contains a Statistical Annex with annual macroeconomic data for each of the OECD countries. The data typically cover 20 years with forecasts ahead for the next two years. There are 61 tables in Excel spreadsheets, grouped into workbooks in 8 separate files. They are normally available a few weeks after the publication of the paper version. There is also normally a gap of a few weeks from the time the previous edition is withdrawn to the time the new edition appears. During this period a 'flash file' is available with summary statistics and forecasts for each of the member countries.

The latest Statistical Annex files can be downloaded from

http://www.oecd.org/document/61/​0,2340,en_2649_33733_2483901_1_1_1_1,00.html

A useful publication with a range of statistics for the latest year and for the previous 12 years can be found in OECD Factbook. The tables can be individually accessed from:

http://new.sourceoecd.org/factbook

7. World Bank data sets

The World Bank site contains a vast database of economic, social and other development statistics for all countries of the world. The following link takes you to the index of all the sections: including Data by Country, Data by Topic and Data Query (from 54 indicators, 5 years and over 200 countries).

http://www.worldbank.org/data/

The World Bank also publishes its annual World Development Report. The 2000/2001 report contained a large statistical annex of selected world development indicators, which is online at

http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/report/

The complete set of World Bank World Development Indicators and World Bank Global Development Finance data are available free via the Economic and Social Data Service, which requires an Athens password:

http://www.esds.ac.uk/international/introduction.asp

8. IMF data sets

Country reports for all countries of the world can be found via the following link:

http://www.imf.org/external/country/

Three particularly useful publications are the World Economic Outlook, Annual Report and International Capital Markets. Each of these has a large statistical annex and can be accessed via the following link (see links in the right-hand column of the screen).

http://www.imf.org/external/pubind.htm

The complete set of IMF Direction of Trade Statistics and IMF International Financial Statistics are available free via the Economic and Social Data Service, which requires an Athens password:

http://www.esds.ac.uk/international/introduction.asp

9. CIA World Factbook

If you don't mind that this information comes courtesy of the CIA, this is a very useful site, giving a host of economic and other data, country-by-country. Simply click on the country.

http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

10. Economist Country Briefings

For a somewhat less controversial source of country information, this part of The Economist site is excellent. Again, you simply click on a country to get a selection of statistics (under Country Profile), plus briefing articles.

http://www.economist.com/countries/

11. OFFSTATS

This is a New Zealand site with links to a host of statistical sources from around the world.

http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/subjects/stats/offstats/

12. Economagic

This US site contains a vast range of US, Australian, Canadian, Japanese and ECB data. The site allows you to manipulate the data: e.g. convert monthly data to quarterly or annual data; convert levels to rates of change; dump data into Excel spreadsheets; and graph the data. Click on Transform this Series to convert the data. Have a play with it. It's easy to follow the instructions. (By the way, ignore the message that comes up saying "Message Alert: You have one message waiting for you". It's just an advert!)

http://www.economagic.com/

13. FRED: Federal Reserve Economic Data

Economic data for the whole of the US, updated daily from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred/

14. RFE Data Links

From this complete table of contents for Resources for Economists, there are links to very many online data sources, categorised by region. Categories include US Macro and Regional Data, World and Non-USA Data, Finance and Financial Markets, Journal Data and Program Archives.

http://www.aeaweb.org/RFE/Data/index.html

15. Davidson Data Center and Network (DDCN)

"DDCN is a centralized clearing house and data archive on transition and emerging market economies. DDCN archives and provides access to socio-economic micro and macro data on these economies."

http://ddcn.prowebis.com/browse_subject2.asp (Browse by Subject) http://ddcn.prowebis.com/browse_country.asp (Browse by Country)