Web Links

General Information About Economic Growth

The World Bank
http://www.worldbank.org/
A wealth of information on the developing world. Look in particular at the links for "data and statistics," "research," and "topics in development."

http://econ.worldbank.org/wdr/
The World Bank's annual World Development Report, which is full of data and analysis, is available online.

United Nations Development Programme
http://www.undp.org/
Information about and analyses of developing countries with an emphasis on poverty, health, the environment, and governance. You can also download their annual Human Development Report.

Economic Growth Resources
http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Economics/Growth/
Maintained by Jonathan Temple at University of Bristol, this site has links to recent research, data sets, and researchers. The listings of articles by topic in the "references" section will be particularly valuable for advanced students.

Resources for Economists on the Internet
http://rfe.org/
Maintained by Bill Goffe, this site has links to numerous data sources, online encyclopedias and glossaries, directories of economists, and so on.

The CIA World Fact Book
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html
A great source for information on geography, political structure, economy, resources, and so on. It also has useful political histories for most countries.

Sources of Data

The Penn World Tables
http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt_index.php
National income accounts data (GDP, consumption, investment, etc.) measured using purchasing power parity for 168 countries over the period 1950-2000.

World Development Indicators Database (World Bank)
http://www.worldbank.org/data/onlinedatabases/onlinedatabases.html
Access by subscription only, but many colleges and universities have subscriptions. Data on 550 indicators of development for 208 countries, covering more than 40 years.

Population Reference Bureau Data Finder
http://www.prb.org/datafind/datafinder5.htm
Data on 95 variables including population trends, health, education, environment, and HIV/AIDS for more than 220 countries, 28 world regions and sub-regions, and the world as a whole.

Total Economy Database (Groningen Growth and Development Centre)
http://www.ggdc.net/dseries/totecon.html
Data on GDP, population, employment, and annual working hours for 99 countries since 1950.

U.S. Census International Data Bank
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html
A good source for population data from around the world. Includes fertility, mortality, breakdown of the population by age groups, and data going back many decades.

Center for International Development at Harvard University
http://www.cid.harvard.edu/ciddata/ciddata.html
This is the place to go for the Barro-Lee data set on educational attainment, as well as several other data sets on geography, disease, natural resources, and trade.

The BP Statistical Review of World Energy
http://www.bp.com/subsection.do?categoryId=95&contentId=2006480
All the data you could ever want on oil, coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, and renewable energy. This is the link to the 2004 edition.

Governance Matters (World Bank)
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/pubs/govmatters3.html
Data on rule of law, corruption, political stability, and other governance indicators for 199 countries for the period 1996-2002.

Freedom in the World (Freedom House)
http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/survey2004.htm
Rankings of political rights and civil liberties, issued annually.

World Population Clock
http://opr.princeton.edu/popclock/
Estimates the current population of the world.