Government Agencies
- Central bank and monetary authority websites (BIS) Data from the Bank of International Settlements
- List of National Statistical Offices (UN) The United Nations Statistics Division, in its mission to promote the development of national statistical systems, has developed a central repository of country profiles of statistical systems. The country profiles include, among others, a brief history of the country's statistical system, legal basis, the statistical program, & much more.
Country Snapshots
- BBC News Country Profiles Full profiles provide an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries and territories, and background on key institutions. They also include audio and video clips from BBC archives.
- Britannica Academic This link opens in a new window Browse the “World Atlas” and explore the world. A guide to the world’s nations, people and places. Excellent international statistics site.
- CIA World Fact Book Provides important unclassified CIA data for more than 250 countries. Covers a wide range of topics including economics, politics, geography and foreign relations. Updated every two weeks.
- Country Studies (via Library of Congress) This link opens in a new window Contains the electronic versions of 80 books previously published in hard copy as part of the Country Studies Series by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. Intended for a general audience, books in the series present a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of select countries throughout the world.
- Economist Intelligence Unit: Country Reports This link opens in a new window Each country page in the EIU database provides forecast updates and featured analysis on economic and political events as well as content pertaining to market opportunities, government regulations and the financial services sector.
- Global Edge Created by the Center for International Business Education and Research at Michigan State University, this Website includes information from a variety of government sources organized in a convenient format. See Country Insights, Trade Bloc Insights, and Industry Insights.
- U.S. State Department: Bilateral Relations Fact Sheets Essay-style information on geographic regions and international organizations. Data is updated as deemed necessary, and thus publication dates range from the early 1990s to very recent.
Country Statistics
- Economist Intelligence Unit: Country Reports This link opens in a new window Each country page in the EIU database provides forecast updates and featured analysis on economic and political events as well as content pertaining to market opportunities, government regulations and the financial services sector.
- The International Data Base (U.S. Census Bureau) (IDB) is a computerized data bank containing statistical tables of demographic, and socio-economic data for 227 countries and areas of the world.
- List of National Statistical Offices (UN) The United Nations Statistics Division, in its mission to promote the development of national statistical systems, has developed a central repository of country profiles of statistical systems. The country profiles include, among others, a brief history of the country's statistical system, legal basis, the statistical program, & much more.
- Monthly Bulletin of Statistics Online (United Nations) Presents current economic and social statistics for more than 200 countries and territories of the world.
- OECD iLibrary This link opens in a new window OECD iLibrary is the online library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) featuring books, papers and statistics and is the gateway to OECD’s analysis and data. It replaced SourceOECD in July 2010. OECD iLibrary also contains content published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), the OECD Development Centre, PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), and the International Transport Forum (ITF).
- World Development Indicators This link opens in a new window World Development Indicators (WDI) contains statistics from over 200 countries including social, economic and financial indicators.
* For more statistics from the United Nations, see the UN Data Portal and UNSD Statistical Databases.
Economic & Business Environment
- B-READY (World Bank) B-Ready provides objective measures of business regulations for local firms in 190 economies.
- Country Commercial Guides (CCG) Presents a comprehensive look at a particular country’s commercial environment including economic, political, and market analysis. Commercial specialists at U.S. embassies prepare the guides annually through a cooperative effort with several U.S. government agencies. The guides consolidate in one document many reports routinely prepared for the U.S. business community.
- Economist Intelligence Unit: Country Reports This link opens in a new window Provides access to the EIU Publications; subscription includes Country Profiles and Country Reports and the following publications: Business Asia, Business China, Business Eastern Europe, Business Europe, Business Latin America, Country Commerce, Country Finance, and Country Monitor. Reports can be searched by title of publication, country and by keyword.
- Global Edge Created by the Center for International Business Education and Research at Michigan State University, this Website includes information from a variety of government sources organized in a convenient format. See Country Insights, Trade Bloc Insights, and Industry Insights.
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor GEM houses the results of research conducted by the Global Entrepreneurship Research Association (GERA) on the state of entrepreneurship around the world.
- OECD iLibrary This link opens in a new window OECD iLibrary is the online library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) featuring books, papers and statistics and is the gateway to OECD’s analysis and data. It replaced SourceOECD in July 2010. OECD iLibrary also contains content published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), the OECD Development Centre, PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), and the International Transport Forum (ITF).
Economic Development
- Eldis -- Country & Region Profiles http://www.eldis.org/ Features country profiles, extensive subject resource guides, and information about fair labor, trade, and investment issues.
- FAO: Food & Agricultural Organization of the United Nations http://www.fao.org The FAO produces various publications related to food & agriculture. See statistics on top tool bar for FAO Statistical Yearbook.
- World Bank Open Knowledge Repository This link opens in a new window The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) is the bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and knowledge products. OKR contains research from thousands of works including World Bank published books, World Development Reports, Policy Research Working Papers, Economic and Sector Work studies, journal articles, and World Bank Group annual reports and independent evaluation studies.
- World Development Indicators This link opens in a new window World Development Indicators (WDI) contains statistics from over 200 countries including social, economic and financial indicators.
Economic Rankings
- Business-Ready: World Bank International Finance Report Produced by the World Bank, this database provides information on business regulations and their enforcement in many countries. Countries are ranked according to ease of doing business. The Doing Business Indicators are comparable across 175 economies. These indicators include starting a business, dealing with licenses, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, enforcing contracts, and others. Scroll down to “Subnational Reports” for reports on doing business in specific areas. See “Explore Economy Data” for economic conditions in countries.
- Global Competitiveness Report 2020 (Most Recent) Country information includes rankings according to notable competitive advantages and disadvantages.
- Global Economic Prospects (World Bank) GEP is the World Bank’s semi-annual flagship publication on the state of the world economy.
Finance
- Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics This link opens in a new window Includes balance of payments and international investment position (IIP) data of individual countries, jurisdictions, and other reporting entities, and regional and world totals for major components of the balance of payments. Balance of payments data are available for over 200 economies and international investment position data are available for over 100 economies.
- Central Banks on the Web (Bank for International Settlements) The Bank of International Settlements sponsors this web page, and links to the Web sites of many central banks with Internet presence. A source for statistical data about a country’s economy.
- Euromoney “Monthly journal of money and capital markets." Supplements, titled Euromoney Research Guides are published several times per year. Topics include country guides, world economic analysis, emerging markets, the European Monetary Unit, and other timely issues.Location: Online and Pardee Library Periodicals
- IMF eLibrary Data This link opens in a new window Provides access to Direction of Trade Statistics, International Financial Statistics, etc.
- International Debt Statistics This link opens in a new window International Debt Statistics (Formerly Global Development Finance Online) focuses on financial flows, trends in external debt, and other major financial indicators for developing and advanced economies. Data is from Quarterly External Debt Statistics and Quarterly Public Sector Debt databases.
- International Tax & Business Guides (Deloitte Touche) Provides information on taxation and other business conditions in 126 countries and jurisdictions. The Country Highlights series covers corporate, personal, and withholding tax, and select indirect tax rates and systems; administrative and compliance requirements; anti-avoidance rules; and the business and financing climate. The more detailed Guides cover the investment climate, business regulations, foreign investment, choice of business entity, business taxation, personal taxation, and the labor environment.
Finding Articles & News
- Access World News This link opens in a new window Find full-text current and archived articles on issues, events, people, government and more. Includes local newspapers, editorials, announcements and other sections from more than 10,000 sources.
- Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window Provides bibliographic and full text content, including indexing and abstracts for scholarly business journals back to 1886 and full text journal articles in all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, accounting, finance and economics. The database full text content includes investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses. Sources covered by this database include Economist Intelligence Unit country reports.
- Factiva This link opens in a new window Provides worldwide full text access to local and regional newspapers, trade publications, business newswires, press release wires, media transcripts, news photos, business-rich websites, investment analyst reports, market research reports, country and regional profiles, company profiles, historical market data.
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window Nexis Uni is a source for newspapers and magazines, trade journals, wire services and transcripts, as well as legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790, and information on U.S. and international companies and executives.
- PressReader This link opens in a new window Full-page images and article images with searchable full text of international newspapers and magazines from the last 90 days, in the original language. Includes computer-generated translations to English and other languages for some publications.
- ProQuest One Business This link opens in a new window ProQuest One Business combines multiple ProQuest business information databases including ABI-Inform, Accounting, Tax & Banking and Entrepreneurship and contains more than 130 million documents. Content in this database also covers over 2,400 journals and magazines, several hundred news sources, thousands of ebooks, videos and company, industry and country reports.
- Newspapers and News Media A Research Guide includes directions on finding international newspapers and some direct links.
Global Trade
- Direction of Trade Statistics This link opens in a new window Time series data from 1980-present detailing the value of merchandise exports and imports between each country and all its trading partners. Includes total bilateral and multilateral exports and imports aggregated at national or regional group levels. The database contains over 100,000 time series covering more than 180 countries and areas.
- IMF eLibrary Data This link opens in a new window Provides access to Direction of Trade Statistics, International Financial Statistics, etc.
- International Trade by Commodity Statistics From OECD iLibrary. Database includes statistics on commodity trades between countries.
- UN Comtrade Database Monthly and yearly trade records for different countries from 1962. Statistics include trade records between countries at detailed product level.
- United States Trade Representative List of foreign governments that trade with the United States.
- U.S. International Trade Library This link opens in a new window This collection includes the publications archive of the U.S. International Trade Commission plus legislative histories, scholarly articles, and other publications relating to the exchange of goods and services between the United States and other nations.
- World Chambers Network The worldwide chambers of commerce and industry initiative dedicated to international trade. Includes international trade information center, company files, chamber of commerce directory, and more.
- World Trade Organization WTO is the only international organization dealing with the global rules of trade. Its main function is to ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible.
*For books, search the BU Libraries Search for key word terms such as: Global Trade, International Trade, Foreign Trade Regulation or World Trade Organization.
Industry & Markets
- Company Dossier through Nexis Uni In the Company Dossier box, click on “Create a Company List” to create a list of international or U.S. companies by industry, geographic area and revenue. Rank U.S. companies by sales.
- Euromonitor Local Company Profiles (Factiva) Euromonitor Local Company Profiles contains 7000 company profiles, from 80 countries, across 170 sectors, predominantly within the FMCG markets - food and drink, household care, health and beauty, etc. The Local Company Capsules offers an overview of key facts including company background, strategic direction and competitive positioning for public and private companies.
- Euromonitor Sector Capsules (Factiva) Euromonitor's Sector Capsules are a collection of reports which provide Headlines, Market Trends, Company Shares, Competitive Analysis and Brand Information for consumer markets across 80 countries.
- Export.gov, Market Intelligence Find industry sector analysis and market research organized by country and industry. Offers market information on specific industries that can help determine market potential, market size, and competitors. Some reports include useful links to Industry Associations. Must log-in to retrieve information.
- Market Share Reporter (Gale Business: Insights) Presents comparative business statistics. Each entry features a descriptive title; data and market description; a list of producers/products along with their market share; and cites original sources.
- Mergent Online This link opens in a new window In-depth company information and financials for international public companies. Reports for approximately 30 different industries are available for Asia Pacific, Europe, and North American regions.
- UniWorld Online This link opens in a new window An online directory of business contact information for headquarters, subsidiaries, and branches of multinational firms with offices in another country, covering over 200 countries and 20,000 industries. Previously released as two separate directories under the Uniworld label: "American firms operating in foreign countries" and "Foreign firms operating in the United States."
* For more information on global industry reports also see the Industry Information Sources research guide.
International Organizations
- International Monetary Fund (IMF) IMF working papers, Staff Country Reports and Papers on Policy Analysis & Assessment are all available here in full text. News, fund rates, and information about the organization are also available. The easiest way to navigate this site is to use the site map.
- United Nations For links to individual UN programs such as UNESCO, see the UN System of Organizations. The UN produces and collects huge amounts of both topical and country-specific data and statistics. Use the site search option, or go to the UN System Pathfinder to locate UN publications by topic.
- World Bank Historical information on the Bank, news coverage, publication lists, and country and regional information.
Labor
- Bureau of International Labor Affairs The Bureau of International Labor Affairs is an operating unit of the United States Department of Labor which manages the department's international responsibilities.
- The Conference Board International Labor Comparisons ILC program prepares economic indicators that are comparable across countries. ILC examines country data series, identifies areas where concepts are not aligned, and adjusts series to a comparable basis.
- Economist Intelligence Unit: Country Reports This link opens in a new window Each country page in the EIU database provides forecast updates and featured analysis on economic and political events as well as content pertaining to market opportunities, government regulations and the financial services sector.
- International Labor Comparisons - Bureau of Labor Statistics ILC program adjusts data to a common conceptual framework because direct comparisons of national statistics across countries can be misleading due to differing concepts and methods.
- International Labor Organization Statistics LABORSTA Internet allows you to search a variety of tables by country. Tables include wages by economic activity.
- International Trade Union Confederation ITUC’s primary mission is the promotion and defence of workers’ rights and interests, through international cooperation between trade unions, global campaigning and advocacy within the major global institutions.
- OECD Labour Force Statistics Provides detailed statistics on labour force, employment and unemployment, broken down by gender, as well as unemployment duration, employment status, employment by sector of activity and part-time employment.
- World Federation of Trade Unions Provides overview of issues affecting trade unions in the world.
