Country Data and Statistics
>About this Category
Sites in this category carry cross-country statistics and data, useful for country analysis, on topics from politics to the economy to the environment.
BEA International Economic Accounts
http://www.bea.gov/bea/di1.htm
There's no better source for data on foreign direct investment by U.S. firms, with recent updates, historical data, and breakdowns by country and industry. Also has press releases on international trade (for more data, see the Census site) and data on foreign investment in the U.S.
KEYWORDS: foreign investment statistics
BLS International Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/bls/international.htm
Ever wondered how prices for crude oil tanker freight are faring? No, me neither, but if prices of exports and imports are your thing, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has all the data you need. Also on the site are foreign labor statistics, though only for the industrialized countries. These include labor force, unemployment, consumer prices, and labor costs -- but only in index terms (e.g. 1980 = 100) not dollar terms. Thanks to Jeff Wolf for the tip.
KEYWORDS: labor, labor cost statistics
Commanding Heights Country Data Page
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/countries/index.html
The website based on the PBS miniseries, based on the book, based on the Lenin quote. Pulitzer Prize Winner Daniel Yergin shows his clout with a fancy website to accompany a PBS documentary on his book, Commanding Heights. Better data for more countries can be had elsewhere, but the site's notable for a user-friendly design and great historical information, including graphs back to 1945. Data coverage includes the basics: growth, employment, inflation, trade.
KEYWORDS: growth statistics, income statistics, inflation statistics
Correlates of War Data Site
http://www.correlatesofwar.org/
What causes wars? Who knows, but here's a site with a lot of data on it, including both civil and international conflicts, duration, casualties, and so on. In non-user-friendly format best-suited for academics.
KEYWORDS: political violence statistics, military statistics
Deutsche Bank Country Data Pages
http://www.dbresearch.com/servlet/reweb2.ReWEB?rwsite=CIB_INTERNET_EN-PROD&$rwframe=0
Deutsche Bank, as a service to humanity, makes a lot of country data on its research site available at no charge. For emerging markets this even includes forecasts for key indicators. As you'd expect from investment research, the content is biased towards market indicators: stocks, bonds, and exchange rates.
KEYWORDS: equity indices, bond prices, sovereign spreads
FAO Country Profiles
http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/default.asp?lang=en
There comes a time in every man's life when he must know how much tomato paste Argentina exports. For such detailed agricultural data, look no further than the Food and Agriculture Organization's website. Once you select a country you'll see links to a variety of documents covering the FAO's "fields of expertise" (ahem). Most of the links are to statistical information, but there's also a bit of food and agriculture news.
KEYWORDS: agriculture statistics
ITC Country Profiles
http://www.intracen.org/menus/countries.htm
The country profiles produced by the International Trade Center (select a country from the pulldown menu at upper right) offer a wealth of trade data, run through sophisticated analysis tools. Exporters will find the Trade Simulation useful in picking target markets. The Trade Performance Index, Export Performance Structural Graph, and Comparative Advantage information are also fascinating -- this last reveals, based on statistical models, what a country is good at exporting, and what it's not. The top strength for the US? "Non-electronic machinery." Makes sense, though our vote would have been "guns."
Keywords: trade statistics
Joint Statistics on Foreign Debt
http://www.oecd.org/statistics/jointdebt
The best source for up-to-date, comprehensive data on foreign indebtedness. Set up after the Asian financial crisis, when it became clear that some countries had been fibbing about how much they owed.
KEYWORDS: foreign debt statistics
NationMaster.com
THIS SITE ROCKS. There isn't any historical data, and it's not comprehensive. But if you want comparative statistics of any kind, search here first (and then come back to us if you don't find what you're looking for). Nationmaster collects statistics from other websites -- covering everything from economy to politics to demographics -- and it's incredibly easy to use, and free.
KEYWORDS (listing only those that are hard to find elsewhere): crime statistics, election statistics, democratization, foreign aid statistics, economic inequality statististics, tourism statistics, environment statistics, sports statistics
Other Guides to Data Resources on the Web
Want just the links, no opinions? Try these sites, specializing in academic and odd data. These tend to have good historical series on interesting topics, but are rarely up-to-date.
For political science data, kept up to date by the UM library:
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stpolisc.html
For economic data, also by the UM library:
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stecon.html
A superb and comprehensive guide, especially to obscure academic data sets:
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/data.html
Similar, but with a fancy user interface, and covers individual/household and firm-level datasets: http://ddcn.prowebis.com/
Similar, if the above two fail: http://odwin.ucsd.edu/idata/
An excellent guide to official (national government) statistics websites:
http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/subjects/stats/offstats/
KEYWORDS: statistics
PAI Demographics and Security Project
http://www.populationaction.org/resources/publications/securitydemographic/index.html
The right wing has their CIA-funded State Failure Project (see separate entry); here the left wing has their say with the International Demographics and Security Project, which concludes that demographic pressures cause political instability. Like, hey man, it's all about the people. The demographic data on the site is old and getting older but, well, you know, equal time and all that.
KEYWORDS: demographic statistics
SIPRI Military Data
http://www.sipri.org/contents/webmaster/databases
The authoritative and comprehensive source for military data: defence spending, troop strength, arms transfers, and so on.
KEYWORDS: military strength, military statistics
State Failure Project
http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/
Originally a research project on political instability funded by the CIA, now a public-private-academic partnership that's taken on a life of its own. There is, unfortunately, no state failure ranking. There are, however, research reports make fascinating reading, listing variables that explain historical state failures with 80-plus percent accuracy. Also includes downloadable data on state failures, quite useful for those designing their own political risk models that will change the world. Good luck with that.
KEYWORDS: political violence statistics, political stability
U.S. Census Foreign Trade Data
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/
A great source for data on foreign trade with the U.S. Includes breakdowns by product and for individual U.S. states.
KEYWORDS: foreign trade statistics
UN Comtrade Trade Database
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/comtrade/default.aspx
This incredibly complex trade database has detailed product-by-product international trade statistics, as well as trade statistics by country pairs. It's free, but you pay in blood trying to figure out the user interface. Actually, in all fairness, it's easier to use than some of the other UN efforts and has cool data display tools (check out the "Tag Clouds" feature) which make us feel we are living in the e-future.
KEYWORDS: trade statistics
UNCTAD FDI Stats
http://www.unctad.org/Templates/Page.asp?intItemID=3198&lang=1
Your best choice for statistics on foreign direct investment by country. The BEA site has more detail, but only for investment by US companies.
KEYWORDS: foreign investment statistics
UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics
http://stats.unctad.org/handbook/
Various bodies of the United Nations are having an informal competition on who can produce the stats database that's hardest to use. UNCTAD has made a fine effort, with this database, which requires registration, contains lots of great trade, investment, commodity price, remittance, foreign exchange reserves, and other data, and is nearly incomprehensible. But they may have been outdone by the UN Stats Division, which also has a user interface of mind-boggling complexity: UN Trade Database. The U.S. Census site is easier and more up-to-date, but only has U.S. data.
KEYWORDS: foreign investment statistics, foreign trade statistics, commodity prices, remittances, foreign exchange reserves
UNEP GEO Data Portal
Located in Switzerland for some reason, the United Nations Environmental Program has a wealth of cross-country environmental data. Head to the homepage, plug something environmental -- "water," "forest", "CO2" -- into the search box. A list of variables will pop up and you can have these graphed or in tables for countries worldwide. We haven't seen any site with a greater supply of obscure cross-country environmental statistics.
KEYWORDS: environmental statistics
UNHCR Statistics
http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/statistics
What do refugees have to do with country analysis? We can't imagine, but maybe you know something we don't.
KEYWORDS: refugee statistics
UNIDO Statistics
http://www.unido.org/Regions.cfm?area=GLO
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization breaks the usual stats down by industry. If you head to a country page and click "statistics" you'll find output data, value added, employment, wages, international trade and more broken down by industry (beverages, textiles, leather products, etc.).
KEYWORDS: industry statistics, labor cost statistics
WRI EarthTrends
The World Resources Institute EarthTrends site is billed as the "Environmental Information Portal," and it certainly qualifies. Click on a topic, and then "Country Profiles" to see the goods. A wealth of statistics, plus charts and graphs, pops up in PDF format. The data is mostly lifted from other -- chiefly UN -- sites, but is well-chosen and well-formatted.
KEYWORDS: environmental statistics
World Bank Country Data
http://www.worldbank.org/data/countrydata/countrydata.html
Probably the best site for basic economic and social data. The Country-at-a-Glance tables shine for country analysis information such as literacy, income, infant mortality, and long-term economic performance. The Data Profile tables have more environmental and social data plus better debt stats.
If you're trying to do cross-country comparisons for a lot of countries, you'll have more luck at the UN statistics division.
And if you're some goody-two-shoes who cares only about poverty, education, gender equity, child mortality, maternal health, disease, and the environment, the Millenium Development Goals site has better country pages. Just don't expect any of those goals to actually be reached.
Similar and even more detailed poverty/health/nutrition indicators are on UNICEF's country pages.
Note that all of the above data comes, in the end, from the World Development Indicators dataset -- an online subscription providing the above and much much more is only a few hundred bucks.
KEYWORDS: growth statistics, budget statistics, foreign debt statistics, health statistics, income statistics, poverty statistics, gender statistics, education statistics