Data and Information Sources for the U.S. Economy
Suggestions for additions to this list are welcome. E-mail sck5@cornell.edu
Where is the stockmarket today? Where are interest rates? Click here to find out. For more in depth analysis of stock and bond markets and the factors that influence them, check Briefing.com.
1. The American Economics Association has a website named Resources for Economists which has an encyclopedic list of all sorts of web-based economics sites.
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3. EconStats is another site with links to all kinds of US data. It also has links to data for many other countries.
4. The Economics Statistics Briefing Room is the White House site for overall economics statistics. This also includes links to other parts of the government.
5. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a non-partisan site that focuses on economic policies related to the budget and their effects on low and moderate income people. Another very useful site is The Tax Policy Center. See especially their section on Tax Facts which has lots of useful information on tax levels, distribution, burden, etc.
6. ArgMax is an excellent site for economic news, data links and analysis.
7. The Library of Economics and Liberty features articles and links to many books and other economics related resources.
8. The Heritage Foundation comments on economic policy from a conservative viewpoint. This link takes you to a very useful federal budget calculator that will help you to understand what the federal government spends its money on and where they get the money from.
9. This site contains a Budget Explorer which I like because it allows you not only to calculate your own budget but also links to the various executive branch departments with spending authority so you can see exactly where the money is going.
10. The Concord Coalition is a non-partisan group advocating a balanced budget. Their site contains very useful graphs and projections showing what current taxing and spending proposals mean for the federal budget in the years ahead.
11. The National Debt Awareness Center has a useful graph providing up to date information on the size of the national debt and what the Federal Government is spending money on.
12. OMB Watch is another site devoted to information on what is happening to the federal budget. Click here to link to OMB's own presentation of the 2004 budget.
13. The Dismal Scientist is a very good site for evaluations of current statistics and policy.
14. The Brookings Institution publishes lots of good articles on current economic and political policy.
15. Want information on real estate? Check the site of the National Association of Realtors.
16. For demographic and population numbers, go to the US Census Bureau
Information on Other Countries
1. The International Monetary Fund is an excellent site for data on all member countries, with a particular emphasis on balance of payments, exchange rate and financial/monetary data.
2. The World Bank has cross country data on a wide variety of subjects.
3. EconStats has links to the national statistical bureaus of most countries in the world.
4. The UNDP has cross country data with a particular focus on measures of human welfare and poverty.
5. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN has cross country information on food and agriculture.
6. The Penn World Tables are useful source for a variety of economic data series not available in other sources.
7. The Foreign Labor Statistics page at the U.S. BLS site is just what it sounds like.