Databases available for the UCSC Economics Department

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Databases available for the UCSC Economics Department This document presents an overview of databases available to the UCSC Economics Department and how to access them. Some databases are available online from the UCSC library. Others are available online directly from the vendor's website. Others are available on CDs which can be checked at the front desk of the Econ Dept, Eng. 2 rm 401. In all cases, access to data is limited to the UCSC community for web-based data, and to members of the Economics Department for data CDs.

Data available with licenses purchased through the library are available over the web (from link above or directly from the data vendor's website) for any computer here at UCSC or any computer dialed into the UCSC network (the data vendor checks the IP of the requesting machine, no password is required).

Off campus users with an ISP other than the UCSC modem pool can use the library's SlugLink service to allow access to UCSC only databases. SlugLink is a remote access service that allows off-campus users to use online electronic library resources as if they were on campus. SlugLink replaces the former CDL Melvyl passwords. An active UCSC library account is required for SlugLink.

INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL YEARBOOK (ISY)

ISY covers a wide range of economic and socio-economic themes:  short term economic indicators, general economic statistics, industry statistics, national accounts statistics, financial statistics, social statistics, communications statistics, transport statistics, demographic statistics et al.

ISY Database Sources:

• Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat,Luxembourg)
• Sustainable development Indicators
• General statistics
• Economy and finance
• Population and social conditions
• Industry
• Trade and services
• External trade
• Transport
• Regional statistics (REGIO)


• Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD, Paris)
• International Monetary Fund (IMF, Washington)
• United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO, Vienna)
• Fame Information Services  (aka Citibase or S&R DRI Basic Economics Data, AnnArbor)
• Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt
• Statistical Office Germany, Wiesbaden
• DIW, German Institut for Economic Research, Berlin

For full data information please visit the demonstration section at the DSIinternet-data-shop.

When you reach the ISY site, choose a database, then check off the variables you wish to download. The data will be displayed on screen. Scroll down to the bottom and choose 'download table'. The downloaded data may be read into Excel or SAS.

IFS

Available on CD-ROM. Accessible from any computer with a CD-ROM drive. Check out the CD from the front desk of the Econ Dept, Eng. 2 rm 401.

Data are updated monthly (we get a new CD).

To run, choose the IFS icon in the 'Applications' folder on all Econ PCs. You do not need to logon to Barter or map a network drive.

This dataset is also available at the ISY website (see first section of this webpage).

SOURCE OECD

The license for access to SourceOECD is handled by the UCSC library.

JSTOR

FAME BASIC ECONOMICS DATA
(also known as Citibase or S&P DRI Basic Economics Data)

List of contents

• Balance of Payments, U.S. International Transactions
• Consumer, Installment, Credit, Construction
• Composite Indexes of Cyclical Indicators
• Energy, Exchange Rates
• Financial Series
• National Income & Product Accounts
• Housing
• Industrial Production Indexes, Capacity Utilisation Rates, Inventories...
• Gross Stocks
• Labor
• Manufacturers' Shipments, New and Unfilled Orders
• Population, Projections, Consumer Price Index, Producer Price Index
• Retail Trade
• Wholesale Trade

FEENSTRA TRADE DATA

NBER TRADE DATABASE: The NBER Trade Database contains annual trade data for the U.S. manufacturing sector for the years 1972-1994.  The database lists annual values for industry shipments, c.i.f. (cost, insurance, freight) imports, and f.o.b. (freight on board) exports at the 4-digit 1972 SIC level of detail.  The CD-Rom also includes a trade concordance that can be used to match 4-digit 1972 SIC codes to their corresponding 1987 SIC code(s).  NBER Working Papers 5515 (import data) and 5990 (export data) provide documentation for the database and are included on the CD-Rom.  Documentation for the industry shipments data is available as NBER Technical Working Paper No. 205 (not included on the CD-Rom).

WORLD TRADE FLOWS: Bilateral import and export data pertaining to manufacturing for the years 1980 through 1997 are included in the World Trade Flows (WTF) database.  The WTF database is a Statistics Canada compilation of import and export values reported to the United Nations Statistical Office.  All U.N. member nations and some nations who are not members but who choose to report import and export values to the U.N. are included in the database.  In total there are approximately 172 nations listed each year.  The values reported are at the 4-digit SITC level of detail.  A concordance between the 4-digit SITC coding system and the BEA-34 coding system is also included on the CD-Rom.  Documentation for the data is included as an NBER Working Paper.

ECON LIT

Econ Lit includes journals indexed for years in the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) and now listed quarterly in JEL on CD as well as books and dissertations. In addition, Econ Lit includes citations to articles in collective volumes indexed in the annual volumes of the Index of Economic Articles and the full text of JEL book reviews. Econ Lit also incorporates the Abstracts of Working Papers in Economics (AWPE) database licensed from Cambridge University Press.

The Econ Lit web site provides helpful information about Econ Lit, including a description of document types indexed on Econ Lit and hints for searching the Econ Lit bibliography. Another feature of this site is the list of journals indexed in Econ Lit - complete with links to publishers' web pages, where abstracts and even full texts of articles are becoming increasingly available. Citations and abstracts for current articles from the full list of journals indexed on Econ Lit are now included quarterly in the Journal of Economic Literature - Electronic edition (e-JEL), now available to American Economic Association members.

These pages contain the full list of Subject Descriptors and descriptor codes used in the Econ Lit bibliography with links to the comparable subject headings in the JEL Classification System.

Access to Econ Lit is provided through libraries and university network systems throughout the world. Libraries and individuals may contact information services directly to obtain information about dial-up online, internet, and CD-ROM delivery options. In addition, American Economic Association members may subscribe to EconLit-AEA, a personal CD-ROM version of Econ Lit.

Corrections to Econ Lit may be submitted to correct@econlit.org.

Access the data from UCSC's EconLit link.

OECD

The data for most countries include GDP and its major components, producer and consumer price indexes, money stock and related measures, major interest rates, industrial production indexes, unemployment rates, exchange rate vs. the dollar, and the general stock market index. For larger countries, you will also find data on orders, shipments, and inventory stocks, plus greater disaggregation on the price and industrial production indexes. Many of the monthly series are available in both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted forms.

WORLD DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS

Access online at http://devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/.

IMF DIRECTION OF TRADE (DOT) STATISTICS

The product is designed to meet the needs of two sets of users – those who prefer to access the database through an interactive interface and those who prefer to access or process the full contents of the database directly.

For those who prefer to access the database interactively, the browser software provides a familiar and easy-to-use Windows interface for browsing the database, selecting series of interest, displaying the selected series in a spreadsheet format, and saving the selected series for transfer to other software systems, such as Microsoft Excel. It includes four complementary views for browsing the database: (1) a table view corresponding to the tables contained within the DOTSY publication; (2) an economic concept view that provides access to similar concepts across countries; (3) a cross country matrix view that allows retrieval of a single concept and period for selected countries and partners; and (4) a view/search facility based on the structure of the time series codes.

For users who access or process the full contents of the database directly, the DOTS database text or “flat” file can be extracted from the CD-ROM in scientific notation format. It is approximately 300 MB in size. Users should employ the DUMP utility that installs with the browser to generate the flat file. After the browser is installed, click on Start/Programs/IMF CD-ROM/Dump Utility. The Dump Utility screen accepts entries for the database file (E:\data\dot.mdb- where E: is your CD-ROM drive) and output file (your choice). The program begins after the database and output files are selected via the user interface buttons.

The Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) database presents figures on the value of merchandise exports and imports by trade partners as well as area and world aggregates showing trade flows between major areas of the world. The DOTS database on CD-ROM provides users with more than approximately 100,000 time series of annual, quarterly, and monthly trade data for approximately 186 countries. These data are also published in the Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbook (DOTSY). Data on the CD-ROM are available from 1980. Beginning in 1981, nonreported monthly data are estimated following a defined estimation procedure.

Checkout CDs from the front desk of the Econ Dept, Eng. 2 rm 401 for Direction of Trade Statistics Historical (1948-80) data, or current data (up until 2002). The UCSC library has a newer version of this CD for checkout (see Direction of Trade Statistics CD-ROM (IMF) - MERC Disk 2329).

WROLD TELECOMMUNICATION INDICATORS DATABASE

Data for over 200 economies are available. Notes explaining data exceptions are also included. The data are collected from an annual questionnaire sent out by the Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) of the ITU. Additional data are obtained from reports provided by telecommunication ministries, regulators and operators and from ITU staff reports. In some cases, estimates are made by ITU staff; these are noted in the database.

This database uses the World Bank's *STARS* data retrieval system, WIN*STARS. It has an improved user interface, better navigation and display of HTML pages, ability to launch Adobe PDF and MS Excel files within the browser, percentage change and index functions, multidimensional pivot-table view and export, multiple country table views, combined definition, source, and footnote information, mapping, map printing and saving, a choice of data selection techniques, and several data export formats.

See their webpage. ITU has also published a handbook for using this dataset.

Checkout the CD from the front desk of the Econ Dept, Eng. 2 rm 401.

UN INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT STATISTICS

In support of the statistical data, relevant meta-information is collected from the data suppliers and available to the user.

Information is presented by country, year and ISIC category and each of the following items is covered: number of establishments, employment, wages and salaries, output, value added, gross fixed capital formation and number of female employees. All value data are originally stored in national currency values at current prices. The system allows for data conversion from national currency into current U.S. dollars using the average period exchange rates as given in the International Financial Statistics (IFS) under series rf.

Checkout CDs from the front desk of the Econ Dept, Eng. 2 rm 401.

OECD: MEASURING GLOBALIZATION

The Measuring Globalisation database has been created to analyse the performance of foreign affiliates in OECD countries, and to compare them with that of all firms, particularly in the areas of production, employment, international trade and research. It draws attention to the potential benefits of hosting foreign firms for countries.

This electronic product complements the biennial publication Measuring Globalisation: the Role of Multinationals in OECD Economies by providing more complete historical data series than contained in that publication.

This year’s edition includes for the first time data on the activity of affiliates of national firms abroad (outward investment) and also presents data on inward and outward investment for services (FATS).

As regards the manufacturing sector, the 18 variables requested in the OECD questionnaire are broken down by industrial sector and by partner country, and are covered in a somewhat uneven manner among countries. Data in this electronic product relate to the years 1983-99 and are classified according to ISIC Revision 2 or Revision 3 or both depending on the year.

As regards the services sector, five variables are covered: employment, turnover, value added, exports and imports. The time period covered (1990-99) is also more limited than for the manufacturing sector, given that the data collection, using a survey prepared jointly with Eurostat, is more recent.

The publication gives not only basic data but also the share of an industry that is “controlled” by foreign multinationals in each country. To obtain these percentages, the same surveys were used to collect data on the activity of all firms (domestic and foreign) in each country and for each of the variables available. This has been essential since the data on the “national total” and on multinational firms are not always based on the same statistical unit. While most of the industrial variables correspond to “establishments”, data on multinational firms are collected at a higher level, i.e. “firms”, each of which may include several establishments. This means that the figures for a sector’s production or employment, for instance, will differ depending on whether the sectoral data refer to “establishments” or “firms”. For certain variables, in particular exports or imports, it has not been possible to produce data on the activity of multinational firms and on all of the firms in a country on a comparable basis (firms or establishments). Work is under way in the countries concerned to solve this problem.

For help, see the file Guide-e.pdf, in the Doc/English folder on the CD.

Checkout CD from the front desk of the Econ Dept, Eng. 2 rm 401.

The following are web databases accessible from anywhere:

Through the FRED® database, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis provides consumers, students, economists  and financial institutions around the world with economic and financial information in an easy-to-use format.

FRED® provides historical U.S. economic and financial data, including daily U.S. interest rates, monetary and business indicators, exchange rates, balance of payments and regional economic data for the St. Louis Region.

Bureau of Economic Analysis
National, industry, international and regional-level economic data.
 

Bureau of Labor Statistics
"Economy at a Glance" information as well as inflation and unemployment statistics (some international data.

Centre for International Development, Harvard University
A depository for data developed at the Center for International Development at Harvard University (CID), including Barro and Lee Human Capital Data. Also contains links to other on-line datasets.

Eldis Trade Site
Links to international trade organisations, trade research centres and trade statistics.

General Social Survey (US)
Contains data and documentation from the US General Social Survey.

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
An ICPSR archive providing access to electronic criminal justice data including collections from the US Bureau of Justice and National Institute of Justice.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service
Links to reference material for crime statistics. Primarily US data, but some international comparisons.

American National Election Studies
Covers US elections - voting, public opinion and political participation. The site provides free data and documentation which can be downloaded and is host to the NES research community.

US Census Bureau
A very good site providing US Census data, and on-line data covering international demographics, business and geography.

US Economic Indicators
Provides weblinks for economic and financial reports and indicators.

US Federal Reserve Board
Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual data, including commercial paper, loan charge-offs, and medium term notes, interest rates, exchange rates.

Resources for Economists on the Internet.
This guide is sponsored by the American Economic Association. It lists 1,265 resources in 74 sections and sub-sections available on the Internet of interest to academic and practicing economists, and those interested in economics. Almost all resources are also described.

The following are older UCSC databases which have not been updated:

STAN (structural analysis database) was created to fill the gap between the detailed data collected through industrial surveys (such as those found in the OECD's ISIS database) which have limited international comparability, and national accounts data which are more internationally comparable but only available at fairly aggregate levels. Through the use of established estimation techniques, the OECD Secretariat has created a database that is compatible with national accounts for 22 countries. It covers 49 manufacturing industries for six variables with annual data from 1970 to 1996. Currency conversion rate data is also available for these countries over the same time period.

STAN permits the construction of a wide range of industry- and aggregate level indicators of industrial structure and the evolution of performance (e.g. import penetration, investment per employee, export market shares) and enables modeling exercises at a detailed industrial level.

Available on Barter's winapps drive (\\barter\winapps, aka H drive) (H:\b2020) . Map the H drive, then open the 'Applications' folder present on all PCs in Econ. Choose the icon, IVbrowse.

The dataset contains data through 1996. No further updates are planned.

h4>OECD INTERNATIONAL SECTORAL DATABASE Contains annual data for 15 OECD countries and about 30 branches of their economy.

Available on Barter's H drive (H:\OECDPUB). Map the H drive, then open the 'Applications' folder present on all PCs in Econ. Choose the icon, STATWISE (H).

The dataset contains data through 1996. No further updates are planned.

SOCIO ECONOMIC TIME SERIES RETRIEVAL SYSTEM (STARS)

Available on barter's winapps drive (\\barter\winapps, aka H drive), in the stars directory. Accessible from any computer in the department.

Last update was Jan 1995. No further updates are planned.

World DEBT TABLES

Available on barter's winapps drive (\\barter\winapps, aka H drive), in the WDTDX directory (dx.exe). Accessible from any computer  in the department.

Last update was Jan 1995. No further updates are planned.