Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät

Online data sources

The following weblinks are meant to support the search for historical economic data. In most cases, they do not provide direct links to data sources, but to collections of links or databases that are particularly helpful, specific or special.

Collection of weblinks and 'meta'databases:

Specific Databases (very large and useful):

 

 

Collection of weblinks and 'meta'databases

 

 

World

List of the statistical offices of almost all countries.
Go to list.

Well-structured and well-documented collection of economics databases worldwide, most of them starting in 1950.
See overview.

List of data sources and 'meta'databases provided by the Free University of Amsterdam.
Go to list.

Search engine for browsing through 400 websites with collections and catalogues of data from the social sciences.
Try search.

Harvard's "Dataverse Network": researchers from all social sciences combine their individual data collections in a joint database, in order to share efforts and benefits.
Search the Dataverse and get to know idea of the project.
 

Europe

CESSDA is a pool of databases by European social sciences institutes. The catalogue allows you to search all databases at the same time.

About CESSDA. Search the catalogue.

 

USA

 

Directory of statistics collected and published by US government bodies at federal and state level.

View the directory.

 

Specific Databases

 

Focus: 1950 - today

CIA's World Factbook offers general informationen on a countries' population, government, economy, trade, and so on. Data is available for over 250 countries and country-like political entities.
Access World Factbook.

UNdata, a search engine for 30 databases of the United Nations. It comprises approximately 60 million data sets showing economic development country by country.
Try UNdata.

Database of country- and goods-specific exports and imports provided by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Go to the WTO database.

Census (ie. population) data for many countries provided by the US statistical office, starting in 1950 with projections for every year up to the year 2050. Downloadable in time series and cross-sectional form.
Access collection of census.gov.

Labor market statistics from the International Labor Organization (ILO). High-frequency data for employment and wages for almost all countries starting in 1950.
Go to the ILO database.
 

Focus: 1750 - 1950

Collection of disaggregated time series covering all part of the economy by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The database comprises mostly data for the US economy, but also from the UK, Germany and France.
Macrohistory Database of the NBER.

Website of the Global Price and Income History Group at UC Davies. It encompasses time series and cross-sectional data sets, some of them starting in the year 1000 AD.
Visit Website.

EH.Net is an online platform where economic historians share historical data, e.g. on prices.
Access EH.Net's database.

 

Postbuch 1928