Research Guides: ECON 396: Resources for Economics Thesis Writers (HC): Find Data & Statistics

Sources for Data and Statistics

World Development Indicators (WDI) Online
World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized international sources. It includes more than 1100 indicators on population, income, social, economic, financial, natural resources, and environment, covering 210 countries and 18 regional and income groups. Also includes the International Debt Statistics (IDS) database. Data ranges from 1960-present.

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)
Maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED provides 35,000 economic time series from 38 sources. FRED also provides an Excel add-in to access economic data directly from Excel.
International Financial Statistics
Contains time series data for most IMF members (over 200 countries) including data on a country's exchange rates, international liquidity, money and banking accounts, interest rates, production, prices, international transactions, government accounts, and national accounts as well as commodity and trade statistics. Also contains area and world tables for selected series. (Online access to recent data, print access to older data.)
Data.gov
Data.gov provides access through a searchable catalog to U.S. government data. Developed by the Federal CIO Council, Data.gov provides descriptions of the federal datasets, information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S.)
Provides national and regional data in the areas of consumer and producer prices, labor statistics, and income.

ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) Data Archive
Provides access to an archive of online social science data, training facilities in basic and advanced techniques of quantitative social analysis. Provides a comprehensive list of ICPSR resources and services, information on membership and governance, links to national data archives affiliated with ICPSR, and contact information.
LSEG Workspace
Provides real-time market data, news, ownership data and analysis tools covering public corporations and all types of investment vehicles. Coverage is North America and historical data is available.
PrivCo
Database of financial data on major privately-held companies. Includes private financials and revenues; private M & A deals and deal multiples, private firm valuations, VC funding, private equity deal history; and private and family ownership data.
UNdata
The numerous databases, tables and glossaries containing over 60 million data points cover a wide range of themes including Agriculture, Crime, Education, Employment, Energy, Environment, Health, HIV/AIDS, Human Development, Industry, Information and Communication Technology, National Accounts, Population, Refugees, Tourism, Trade, as well as the Millennium Development Goals indicators.
IBISWorld
Wide-ranging collection of U.S. and global industry market research and U.S. risk ratings. Contains business reports in five categories: industry market research, industry risk ratings and company research for the U.S., global industry research (including a special collection of China Industry Reports), and selected economic and demographic data.

Resources for economists on the Internet
Includes links to many data and reference sources

Citing Data

Always cite your data so readers can verify your results and give credit to the original source. Common elements of a data citation include:

Author/Creator → person, organization, or agency responsible
Title → dataset or study name
Year → when the dataset was released or last updated
Publisher/Distributor → repository or data provider (e.g., ICPSR, World Bank, BLS)
Version → edition or release number, if applicable
Access → DOI, URL, or other persistent identifier

Many data repositories will provide a recommended citation. Here are additional examples:

APA 7

O’Donohue, W. (2017). Content analysis of undergraduate psychology textbooks (ICPSR 36966; Version V1) [Data set]. ICPSR. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36966.v1

Parenthetical citation: (O’Donohue, 2017)
Narrative citation: O’Donohue (2017)

AEA

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2000–2010. Current Employment Statistics: Colorado, Total Nonfarm, Seasonally adjusted - SMS08000000000000001. Washington, DC: United States Department of Labor. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMS08000000000000001 (accessed February 9, 2025).

Parenthetical citation: (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2000–2010)
Narrative citation: BLS (2000-2010)

How to Cite Data Correctly
Guidance from social science data repository ICPSR on how and why to cite data.
APA 7 Data Set References
APA 7th edition reference example and explanation for citing a data set.
AEA Reference List Entries for Datasets
American Economic Association guide for reference list entries for datasets and registered studies.