EH.net or the Economic History Services web site is an excellent resource for resources of interest to Economic Historians. However, whenever you are looking for historical economic data, check the EH.net databases page, which includes a range of U.S. and global historical data series that have been submitted to the site.
If you are looking for GATT trade documents, you might want to start with the GATT Digital Library, a digital library of over 30,000 public documents published between 1947 and 1994. The library is a shared project of Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) and the WTO. “At present this site provides access…
If you have ever used the World Resources Series published by the World Resources Institute (in cooperation with the UNDP, UNEP, and World Bank) for its data tables, you will love the EarthTrends: The Environmental Information Portal. Well-documented, comparative data drawn from major sources on economic, demographic, political, resources and energy topics.
CensusScope: Census 2000 Data, Charts, Maps, and Rankings is a great supplement to the United States Census’s FactFinder web site. It’s strength is its graphics which help make Census data more clear and accessible to a wider audience. With just a few clicks, you can view maps, trend lines, charts and rankings for your state,…
Data on the Net From the University of California, San Diego’s searchable listing of 850 Internet sites of numeric Social Science statistical data, data catalogs, data libraries, social science gateways, addresses and more.
Of all the free web sites in my bookmarks, the one to which I refer most often is the University of Michigan Documents Center’s Statistical Resources On the Web maintained by Grace York. The organization of the site (even with the frames) makes it easy to find sources on a topic and the annotations make…
The Human Development Reports (HDR) from the UNDP are now freed from their pdfs. At the newly redesigned HDR site, you can find statistical data and their documentation, either in published table format or in animated graphics. You can also create your own tables for download. What I like best is the ability to browse…
More and more datasets can be manipulated online with merely your web browser (i.e. without downloading and opening in statistical software like SPSS). To see all datasets with SDA analysis capabilities in the ICPSR collection, simply search by the keyword ‘sda’ or just follow this link.
ICPSR has a glossary of terms, formats, and statistical vocabulary used on their site. This glossary is broad enough to be of use well beyond the ICPSR site. Another great glossary is the one provided by Jim Jacobs of social science computer and social science data terms. See also the SSRIC glossary.
Eurostat has received a facelift and is now noticeably faster (though nowhere near murcurial) and works in browsers other than Internet Explorer. That’s right, you can now access European Union statistics from you PC or your Mac, via Safari, Firefox, Mozilla and quite possibly others that I haven’t tried. I have yet to find any…