LibGuides: ECON 495S/496S: Honors Seminars I & II: Data Sources

Broad topical coverage

ICPSR
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. When you create an account, identify yourself as an affiliate of Duke University to gain free access.
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- You need to create an account while running VPN (or be on campus) in order to download data. After you create an account, you can access the service from outside of VPN.
- Detailed data in standard statistical formats (SAS, Stata, SPSS, etc.).
- Thematic collections provide convenient topical access
- A bibliography that connects ICPSR data to publications
- The American Economic Association (AEA) archives the data used in its journals at ICPSR
IPUMS
Portal for US federal and international data in several areas, including census, the US Current Population Survey, health, and education. Includes extraction and aggregation tools to gather data from public use microdata samples.
NBER Data Archive
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) provides these public use datasets on a variety of economic, policy, and social science topics, including labor and compensation, trade, health, vital statistics, education, and more. Data are typically provided in standard statistical formats such as STATA, SAS, and as CSV files.
Resources for Economists - Data Resources
Portal to data sources from the American Economic Association (AEA).
Center for Data and Visualization Sciences Data Collections
Data collections purchased by the library's CDVS for use by the Duke community.

ProQuest Statistical Insight This link opens in a new window
An index to publications that include statistical data, from governments, IGOs/NGOs, and trade associations, usually fairly aggregated.
Statista This link opens in a new window
Search for downloadable statistics and studies gathered by market researchers, trade organizations, scientific publications, and government sources on over 600 industries

NASDAQ Data Link
Formerly, Quandl. A variety of financial information, much of it available without a paid subscription.

US Economic Data

Data.gov
An index to US federal government agency datasets and data portals. Usually leads to an agency webpage, but occasionally you can download data directly from Data.gov.
FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)
Includes FRED, with 40,000 economic time series; ALFRED,with archival (unrevised) time series; FRASER, with historical US federal govt. economic publications; and several other components. From the St. Louis Fed.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics
The agency that collects and disseminates a lot of data relating to employment, wages, and prices.
US Bureau of Economic Analysis
An agency that collects and disseminates a lot of macroeconomic data relating to national accounts (GDP, etc.), personal income, and trade.
Census Bureau's Topics A-Z
Alphabetical index to the Census Bureau's web pages.

International Data

World Development Indicators (World Bank)
Find a wide range of economic, environment, health, political, and social indicators in 226 countries.
IMF Data
From the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Recommend going to a source (e.g., International Financial Statistics) and choosing the "Query" option.
OECD iLibrary Statistics
Besides all the books and reports found at the iLibrary site, there are a wealth of data to download. Usually, one of the countries involved needs to be an OECD member.
Penn World Tables
Long time series of national accounts data, normalized to real values.

UN Comtrade This link opens in a new window
Find international trade statistics, detailed by commodity and partner country, from the United Nations Statistics Division

Note: Duke only has access to the freely available features of this resource.

Financial Data

Bloomberg Professional
Provides current and recent historical financial data on individual equities, stock market indices, fixed-income securities, currencies, commodities, futures, and foreign exchange for both international and domestic markets.
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It also provides news on worldwide financial markets and industries as well as economic data for the countries of the world. Additionally, it provides company profiles, company financial statements and filings and analysts' forecasts.

Global Financial Data This link opens in a new window
Find data on long time series of stock and bond indices and macroeconomic data
Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) This link opens in a new window
WRDS is a data portal providing access to more than 50 datasets from various providers covering finance, accounting, economics, management, marketing, banking, insurance, and more. Data formerly in DataStream is now found under the Thomson/Refinitiv section.
LSEG Workspace This link opens in a new window
LSEG Workspace contains market data, company financials and filings, earnings estimates, transaction data, analyst research, and more. LSEG Workspace replaces Thomson ONE and provides access to similar content.
Ford Library's Database Terms of Use apply to LSEG Workspace. You may retain data downloaded from LSEG Workspace for only as long as: 1) you are enrolled or employed at Duke; and 2) only as long as Duke maintains an active subscription to the product. Students may lose access at the end of the academic year in May.

Datastream Advance
The DataStream (aka DataStream Advance or DS Advance) client software from Refinitiv (fka Thomson Reuters) has been retired by the provider. Duke users may now access DataStream data via WRDS, or via the Refinitiv Workspace web site and application, available in mid-late February 2022.

ECON 495S/496S: Honors Seminars I & II: Data Sources

Data Citation

Broad topical coverage

US Economic Data

International Data

Financial Data

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