Penn World Tables
Annual data for more than 160 countries on 25 macro and related aggregates. Also known as the Summers-Heston data.
Good for: Meaningful international comparisons are possible between countries. Data not available for every country for every year.
Time period: 1950-2000
Citation: Alan Heston, Robert Summers and Bettina Aten, Penn World Table Version 6.1, Center for International Comparisons at the University of Pennsylvania (CICUP), October 2002.
Outputs: html tables, SAS data files, comma delimited data files via the web interface. Self-extracting bundled downloads of versions 6.1 and 5.6 are also available.
Documentation: The About page has both pithy description and links to documentation including the Appendix with variable descriptions.
Variables: Population, Exchange Rate, Purchasing Power Parity over GDP, Real Gross Domestic Product per Capita, Consumption Share of CGDP, Investment Share of CGDP, Government Share of CGDP, Price Level of Gross Domestic Product, Price Level of Consumption, Price Level of Government, Price Level of Investment, Openness in Current Prices, Ratio of GNP to GDP, Current Savings, CGDP Relative to the United States, Real GDP per capita (Constant Prices: Laspeyres), Real GDP per capita (Constant Prices: Chain series), Real GDP Chain per equivalent adult, Real GDP Chain per worker, Real Gross Domestic Income (RGDPL adjusted for Terms of Trade changes), Openness in Constant Prices, Consumption Share of RGDPL, Government Share of RGDPL, Investment Share of RGDPL, Growth Rate of Real GDP per capita (Constant Prices: Chain series)