Economic Data     
In many cases, economic research involves accessing and using economic data. You may want to support an argument by presenting data graphically or test a hypothesis by analyzing data using econometric techniques.
A huge amount of data is available on the Web. The advantage of accessing data via the Internet is that it can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet without having to key in the data values. In a lot of cases, the data may be downloaded as an Excel file, but even when the data is in text format, it can be copy/pasted to an Excel spreadsheet and then parsed to separate variables into their own columns. (One of the Excel movie clips demonstrates how to parse.)
Each of the links below takes you to a government agency or some other organization that is either a primary source or disseminator of economic data.
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IMF (International Monetary Fund)
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International monetary data, country studies, exchange rates.
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World Bank
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Development indicators.
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WTO (World Trade Organization)
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International trade, tariffs, and other barriers to trade.
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Economic Report of the President
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Production, employment, prices, and government finance.
Note: Data in the appendix tables are downloadable as Excel files.
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ALFRED (Archival Federal Reserve Economic Data)
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Vintage versions of data available on specific dates in history.
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U.S. Census Bureau
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Demographic, social, economic, and housing data
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Bureau of Economic Analysis
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U.S. Economic Accounts including GDP, real GDP, and input-output tables.
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FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)
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Database of over 3,000 U.S. economic time series.
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Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research
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Links to scanned publications and documents that contain historical data.
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U.S. Bureau Labor Statistics
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Unemployment rate, CPI,wages, productivity.
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National Bureau of Economic Research
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Business cycle dates.
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