Resources of the Week: International Business and Economics Statistics (Part 2)
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Last week, we introduced you to a variety of sources for international business/finance/economic statistics. This week, as promised, we have even more for you.

+ You may have never heard of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). It’s not like you or I would have any reason to transact business with this institution, “an international organisation which fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks.” As a matter of fact, we couldn’t — even if we wanted to: “As its customers are central banks and international organisations, the BIS does not accept deposits from, or provide financial services to, private individuals or corporate entities.” Read more on the “About BIS” page.

There are, however, a few good reasons to visit this website. For one thing, it offers a comprehensive alphabetical list of links to central banks all over the world. It also hosts a Central Bank Research Hub, where you can find working papers from central banks worldwide. There are many different ways to browse these papers. You’ll also find a repository of speeches by central bankers.

Finally, there are A LOT of statistics here:

• the cross-border lending and borrowing of internationally active banks in key financial centres, including offshore centres (banking statistics)
• issuing activity in international and domestic securities markets (securities statistics)
• operations in over-the-counter and exchange-traded derivatives markets (derivatives statistics)
• effective exchange rate (EER) indices for 52 economies (effective exchange rates)
• operations in the global foreign exchange markets (foreign exchange statistics)
• external debt positions of individual countries based on BIS banking and securities statistics as well as on data from other international organisations (external debt statistics)
• payment and settlement systems in major financial centres (payment statistics)

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+ B&E Datalinks, sponsored by the Business and Economics Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association, offers “a comprehensive set of links to data sites on the Web along with a user-based assessment of the quality of each site.” The search page allows you to either browse the sites by broad category (Macroeconomics, Labor and General Microeconometrics, Business Datasets, Finance) or do a keyword search in any or all of the categories.

For each resource, you’ll find a brief description, the date the entry was last modified, and a user-provided rating. There’s also a link to “more info” — generally a brief description of the organization providing the data — and another link that allows you to rate that resource. Do be aware that some of the entries have not been updated in quite awhile, so you will find the occasional dead link or outdated description.
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+ The International Monetary Fund
“is an international organization of 185 member countries. It was established to promote international monetary cooperation, exchange stability, and orderly exchange arrangements; to foster economic growth and high levels of employment; and to provide temporary financial assistance to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustment.” We really like the Country Information Page, where you can browse IMF reports and publications by country. There’s some good, detailed stuff here, and much of it is quite current. Browsing under Afghanistan, for example, we unearthed a “Statistical Appendix” (PDF; 385 KB), dated February 20, that was filled with GDP data, industrial sector statistics, transportation and communications data, and agricultural data — including “Opium Production and Prices, 1994–2007.”

The Data & Statistics page, of course, is also worth a bookmark. Here you will find links to a number of statistical databases (some subscription, most free), manuals and guides, and even a few online discussion groups.
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+ The Pliny Fisk Library of Economics and Finance (Princeton University Libraries) offers several useful resource collections:

• Basic Sources of Economic Statistics
• Economic and Political Risk
• International Trade Statistics

Don’t miss the excellent Guide to Globalization Resources, also available as a flat file. Keep in mind that, as with most academic libraries, research guides like this often contain links to subscription resources available only to members of that academic community.
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+ Also worth a look — RenSearch: International Business Statistics from the Rensselaer Research Libraries, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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+ The Federation of International Trade Associations (FITA) offers a nicely annotated page — Really Useful Links for International Trade: Trade and Economic Statistics. And take a look at the Country Profiles and Resources — “…links to resources for most countries in the world as well as more than 80 country profiles developed by Export Enterprises, of Paris, France.” There’s also a link to Exportnavigator.com, a database of roughly 10,000 free market reports of various vintages.

Take a good look at the Tools of Trade section in the lefthand navigation panel on the FITA side; it offers a variety of resources, including glossaries, foreign exchange info, maps, trade law, transportation and logistics info, and much more. FITA, by the way, is kind of an umbrella organization for more than 450 independent international associations such as world trade clubs, chambers of commerce, and various related professional associations. It also offers a free bi-weekly e-mail newsletter — Really Useful Sites for International Trade Professionals — which highlights some of the resources on the website.
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+ Finally, have a look at the World Bank’s Data & Research website. There is a wealth of material here, including working papers, research articles, journals and other publications. If you’re mainly interested in statistics, you can jump right to the page where this type of information is directly available.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 6:24 am and is filed under Business and Economics, Resource of the Week, Source File, Statistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.