Archive-name: econ-resources-faq/part3
Sci-econ-research-archive-name: econ-resources-faq
Last-modified 1996/10/16
Version: vol. 2 no. 2
URL: http://econwpa.wustl.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html


   Resources for Economists on the Internet, Vol. 2, No. 2 October, 1996
                     Bill Goffe <bgoffe@whale.st.usm.edu>

                                Part 3 of 10

   This document lists the many resources on the Internet of interest to
   academic and practicing economists, and those interested in economics.
   In selecting these resources, I exercise some editorial judgment and
   select items that either offer a substantial amount of information, or
   are specialized to a specific area.

   This guide is Copyright 1996 by William L. Goffe <bgoffe@whale.st.usm.edu>.
   It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If
   distributed in part, it must include this copyright notice. It may not be
   sold, or placed in something else for sale, without the permission of the
   author. This guide is provided as is without any express or implied
   warranty.

   ------------------------------------------------------------------------

    For distribution via Usenet, this FAQ is split into 11 parts as large
    files don't travel well on Usenet. Part 0 shows what part each part
    contains. If you wish to retrieve a single text file, see 
    <http://wuecon.wustl.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.text>.

    An html version is available as well, and it can be found at the 
    following sites (the first four contain a searchable index for the 
    entire guide)
     # http://econwpa.wustl.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html             (Missouri)
     # http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/EconFAQ.html                           (U.K.)
     # http://COBA.SHSU.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html                    (Texas)
     # http://www.econ.nyu.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html              (New York)
     # http://www.umich.edu/~ilir/r4e/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html       (Michigan)
     # http://www.finweb.com/econfaq/EconFAQ.html                   (Texas)
     # http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/resources/infoecon/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html 
                                                               (California)
     # http://ruby.wabash.edu/SCHOLAR.SYS/WWWW/PAGES/depart/economic/
              econFAQ/econFAQ.html                                (Indiana)
     # http://www.inform.umd.edu:8080/EdRes/Topic/Economics/EconData/.www/
              EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html                               (Maryland)
     # http://www.fred.ifas.ufl.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html          (Flordia)
     # http://www.helsinki.fi/~lsaarine/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html      (Finland)
     # http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/Goffe/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html       (U.K.)
     # http://www.elsevier.nl/econbase/othergophers/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html 
                                                              (Netherlands)
     # http://www.econ3.uni-bonn.de/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html          (Germany)
     # http://www.uwa.edu.au/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html               (Australia)
     # http://www.ntu.ac.sg/nbs/ae/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.shtml        (Singapore)
     # http://www.unina.it/economia/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html            (Italy)

    The section titled "WHERE TO OBTAIN THIS GUIDE" lists other methods of
    obtaining this guide.

   ------------------------------------------------------------------------

11 WORLD AND NON-U.S. DATA
                                       
11.1 International Economics Gateway

   This site, run by Seth Grimes, has a number of links to sites with
   non-U.S. data. These links are broken up into two classifications:
   international organizations, and national governments. Note that some
   of these sites offer very little data.
   
     # http://www.access.digex.net/~grimes/gate.html
       
11.2 World Economic Window (Bonaparte Inc.)

   This site offers a variety of economic data for countries around the
   world. As they offer only graphs of the data, it is probably most
   appropriate for class and exploratory work. Specifically, they offer
   data on Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the EU, Finland,
   France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait,
   Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the OECD, Portugal,
   Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the
   United Kingdom, and the United States. While not every country has
   every series, the series come in the following groups: balance of
   payments, business surveys, construction, consumer survey, domestic
   trade, foreign exchange, industrial production, inflation and prices,
   the labor market, leading indicators, the money market, national
   accounts, wages, and commodities.
   
     # http://nmg.clever.net/wew/
       
11.3 Luxembourg Income Study (LIS)

   This project brings together 66 household surveys from 25 countries
   (surveys from four other countries are under negotiation) into a
   common database to make studies of international economic comparisons
   easier. For instance, it includes Current Population Surveys from the
   U.S., French Surveys of Income, and a Hungarian Income Study. The
   average survey has approximately 9,000 households with more than
   20,000 members. To maintain confidentiality and restrictions on use,
   the data remains on the host computer in Luxembourg and researchers
   run jobs remotely on that system through electronic mail. Users must
   first register to use the database.
   
   They also have a database (Institutional Database, IDB) of nearly 100
   annual macro indicators on all OECD countries. This database also
   contains rules on taxes and transfers in each country to make
   international comparisons possible. This dataset is available on
   floppy disks.
   
   The datasets are well documented, and workshops and newsletters help
   the researcher to use this complex database. Much of this material is
   on their ftp site.
   
     # http://www-cpr.maxwell.syr.edu/lis_part/lisintro.htm
     # ftp://post.ceps.lu
     # Information: Tim Smeeding, Overall Project Director
       <tmsmeeding@maxwell.syr.edu>, or Inge O'Connor, Administrative
       Assistant (U.S.) <lisaa@maxwell.syr.edu>, or Caroline de Tombeur,
       Administrative Assistant (Europe) <caroline@post.ceps.lu>.
       
* 11.4 International Monetary Fund

*  At this site, you can read about the IMF (including its annual report
*  and extensive material on its structure), their fact sheets on a
*  number of topics, press releases, news briefs, speeches from the
*  managing director, and details from their publications catalog. Among
*  data, they offer the "IMF Memorandum," which offers a variety of
*  current statistical information. Among publications, they offer the
*  "IMF Survey." Finally, their "Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board"
*  is available here. To quote, "The Special Standard and its associated
*  bulletin board respond to the need for comprehensive and timely
*  economic and financial data-with equal and ready access for all
*  users-generated by increased global integration and the associated
*  substantial expansion of financial flows." For many countries, it
*  lists where most any sort of macro data can be obtained (including on
*  the Internet) from countries that participate in this program. For
*  just the U.S., this is a very useful resources as it says who
*  generates various series and how they are collected.
   
     # http://www.imf.org
       
11.5 World Bank

   The World Bank offers a wide variety of material on their operations.
   It includes information on current events (such as press releases and
   issues of the World Bank News), country and project information. In
   this section, the Public Information Center offers Staff Appraisal
   Reports (SARs), Country Economic and Sector Work (CESW) reports,
   Sectoral Policy Papers, Environmental Data Sheets, National
   Environmental Action Plans (EAPs), evaluation reports from the
   Operations Evaluation Department Project Information Documents, IFC
   Environmental Documents, IDA10 Reviews, and Global Environmental
   Facility Project Documents). There is also sectoral information, which
   includes the Vice Presidency for Financial and Private Sector
   Development (FPD), the Vice Presidency for Human Resources Development
   and Operations Policy (HRO) and the Global Environmental Facility
   (GEF). Another section is devoted to information on World Bank
   Publications (including ordering information).
   
   There is also substantial information on the research projects of the
   bank. These include the Economic Growth Project (described elsewhere
   in this guide), and the Living Standard Measurement Study (LSMS) which
   offers some on-line data from this project and information on how to
   obtain it off-line. There is also the Commodity Policy and Analysis
   Unit, which maintains an on-line version of the "Pink Sheet" on
   commodity prices, and the Information Bank on African Development
   Studies (IBADS), which has a number of newsletters and other material.
   There is also material from the International Trade Division, the
   Electronic Media Center, the CGIAR Secretariat, and the Economic
   Development Institute (EDI).
   
   One can find email address of Bank employees by sending mail to
   services@worldbank.org with "Directory Whois Lastname" or "Directory
   Whois FirstName Lastname" in the body of the email.
   
   Working with CIESIN (the Consortium for International Earth Science
   Information Network) the World Bank's Social Indicators of Development
   and Social Trends in Developing Economies (TIDE) have been made
   available. They are described separately, as is their World Growth
   Project, which has a substantial amount of international data.
   
     # http://www.worldbank.org/
     # gopher://gopher.worldbank.org:70/1/
       
11.6 World Bank Social Indicators of Development

   The World Bank and CIESIN (Consortium for International Earth Science
   Information Network) have placed this material (along with Social
   Trends in Developing Economies) on the Internet as part of an
   experiment. This searchable data set spans 170 different economies
   with as many as 94 indicators covering a very wide variety of health,
   demographic, and economic information. Its annual data ranges from
   1965 to 1994. The search mechanism makes very nice use of the web. The
   only vaguely tricky part is finding the entry to it on their page.
   
     # http://www.ciesin.org/IC/wbank/sid-home.html
       
11.7 World Bank Social Trends in Developing Economies (TIDE)

   The World Bank and CIESIN (Consortium for International Earth Science
   Information Network) have placed this material (along with Social
   Indicators of Development) on the Internet as part of an experiment.
   This database contains brief reports on the World Bank's borrowing
   countries. Data is from other World Bank publications, such as the
   World Tables and World Debt Tables, or the IMF's International
   Financial Statistics and Balance of Payments Statistics.
   
   To access this database, look for the entry to search it via the web
   interface. To read the entire report for a given country, select the
   country, set the Topic to "No Specific Topic" (the default) and leave
   the Free Text Search area empty (again, the default).
   
     # http://www.ciesin.org/IC/wbank/tde-home.html
       
11.8 Economic Growth Project (World Bank)

   This project, sponsored by the Macroeconomics and Growth Division of
   the Policy Research Department of the World Bank, and the
   International Center for Economic Growth (San Francisco) examines "the
   relationship between national policies and economic growth." It offers
   two basic resources: abstracts and especially data from articles,
   including a special issue of the Journal of Monetary Economics (Dec.
   1993) on this subject), and abstracts on World Bank working papers on
   the same subject.
   
     # http://www.worldbank.org/html/prdmg/grthweb/growth_t.htm
       
11.9 World Bank's Technet: Think Tank Electronic Conferences

   In cooperation with Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), the
   World Bank is offering this set of electronic conferences devoted to
   the role of science and technology in development. Each conference
   will last about a month, will have a specific topic, and will involve
   some ten to twenty experts from a variety of backgrounds.
   
     # http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/technet/
       
+ 11.10 World Bank Living Standards Measurement (LSMS
+
+  This section of the World Banks studies poverty in developing
+  countries. The information here includes an overview of LSMS survey
+  and datasets, specific information from several surveys, (including
+  some data), reports that use the data, and information for managers of
+  new surveys.
+  
+    # http://www.worldbank.org/html/prdph/lsms/lsmshome.html
       
11.11 BizEd Net - CSO Data (U.K.)

   BizEd (Business Education) Net is designed for students and faculty
   members, and others interested in obtaining data. They currently offer
   the Penn World Tables, and perhaps more importantly, some data from
   the Office for National Statistics of the U.K. This includes some
   selected monthly data, as well as some national accounts data. Plans
   are for this site to rapidly expand.
   
     # http://bizednet.bris.ac.uk:8080/home.htm
       
11.12 World Bank Latin America and Caribbean Region Technical Department

   This site contains a wide variety of information on this region. One
   can read and retrieve a number of papers and reports in both English
   and Spanish. This includes a monthly feature paper by a senior
   economist on a topic of current interest. Most papers are available in
   both ASCII and Adobe Acrobat pdf formats.
   
     # http://www.worldbank.org/html/lat/
       
11.13 Asian Development Bank

   This site describes all aspects of this bank's work. This not only
   included information about themselves, but also includes business
   opportunities, news releases, extensive information on their projects,
   and their work with law and development. There is also extensive
   material on their publications.
   
     # http://www.asiandevbank.org
       
+ 11.14 Eurostat
+
+  This organization, which covers economic activity for the European
+  Union, currently offers press releases and information about itself at
+  this site. In the future, they plan to offer more data from the E.U.
+  
+   # http://europa.eu.int/eurostat.html
       
11.15 Inter-American Development Bank

   This sites describes many aspects of the bank's work. It also has
   extensive information on their projects, press releases, information
   on their press releases, some information on business opportunities,
   information on their private sector projects, and information on the
   Inter-American Investment Corporation.
   
   They also have fairly extensive summary statistical data on their
   member countries.
   
     # http://www.iadb.org/
       
11.16 Country Reports on Economic Policy and Trade Practices for 1992

   This report, from the U.S. Department of State, gives a fairly brief
   synopsis of economic information on a number of countries. Besides
   recent aggregate data, it also contains textual information on that
   country's economic policies and structure. Special emphasis is made on
   issues that influence trade with the U.S.
   
   This information is placed on the Internet by the Univ. of Missouri at
   St. Louis by the same mechanism used for the Economic Report of the
   President.
   
     # gopher://gopher.umsl.edu/11/library/govdocs/crpt
       
11.17 Penn World Tables at the EPAS Computing Facility at the University of
      Toronto

   This organization, which for a fee also makes available the Canadian
   CANSIM database, demonstrates how the web can make it very easy to
   retrieve economic data across the Internet. With a "forms" capable web
   browser, you can very easily select and retrieve individual or
   multiple series from this database, or even can plot them
   interactively. One hopes that others who offer economic data on the
   Internet will soon follow their lead.
   
     # http://datacentre.epas.utoronto.ca:5680/pwt/pwt.html
       
11.18 The International Trade Centre UNCTAD/GATT (ITC)

   This organization, jointly operated by the UN and GATT, deals with
   international trade (particularly with developing and transitional
   countries). Besides details information on their mission and programs,
   they offer considerable data on-line (and even more is available on
   their CD-ROM products). Their COMTRADE database is "by far the most
   comprehensive source of trade statistics as it covers over 100
   reporting countries with time series starting from 1963 (SITC1), 1978
   (SITC2) or 1988 (SITC3 correlated to HS codes)." This data is
   available on a CD-ROM product. In addition, a subset of this data is
   available on-line. To quote, it has "only total imports or exports by
   countries for all product groups (3 digits level) of the Standard
   International Trade Classification Revision 3."
   
     # http://www.unicc.org/itc/Welcome.html
       
11.19 UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD)

   This site has a substantial amount of material on issues concerning
   sustainable development.
   
     # gopher://gopher.un.org/11/esc/cn17
       
11.20 Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN

   This organization's mission is well described by its title. Perhaps
   most useful to economists is their extensive collection of
   agricultural, fisheries, forestry, economics, and nutrition data from
   around the world. See the entry for WAICENT, the World Agricultural
   Information Center. The agricultural section alone has data from 1961
   covering 1500 items in more than 200 countries. Besides data, there
   are a number of items of additional interest and links to other sites.
   
     # http://www.fao.org/
       
11.21 PACIFIC Exchange Rate Service Retrieval Interface

   This offering, run by Werner Antweiler the Policy Analysis Division,
   Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration, University of British
   Columbia (and named PACIFIC for Policy Analysis Computing & and
   Information Faciltiy in Computing) offers two types of exchange rate
   data: current and historical. In both cases daily data is available,
   and from many countries (48 countries are updated daily, and nearly
   200 are updated at least weekly; not all countries have historical
   data). The data comes from Xenon Laboratories.
   
     # http://pacific.commerce.ubc.ca/xr/
       
11.22 Manchester Information Datasets and Associated Services (MIDAS)

   This site, formerly the Manchester Computing Centre - National Dataset
   Service offers a variety of services for U.K., and perhaps other,
   users. In particular, it offers the National Dataset Service that has,
   or will soon have, many datasets of interest to economists. Datasets
   for registered users include the IMF's International Finance
   Statistics (with 24,000 time series from 196 countries), Balance of
   Payments Statistics (52,000 time series from 140 countries), Direction
   of Trade Statistics (61,000 time series from 160 countries), and
   Government Finance Statistics Yearbook (36,000 time series from 135
   countries); the 1991 U.K. Census in various forms; the General
   Household Survey; the National Labour Force Survey; the Family
   Expenditure Survey; the British Household Panel Study; the Central
   Statistical Office (CSO) Macro-Economic Time Series Data Bank (with
   12,000 time series); the OECD's Main Economic Indicators (with more
   than 2500 time series).
   
   Some of this data is from the ESRC Data Archive at the University of
   Essex.
   
   It does not appear that non-U.K. users can register for this service.
   
     # http://midas.ac.uk/
     # gopher://midas.ac.uk:70/1/
     # ftp://midas.ac.uk
       
11.23 ESRC Data Archive

   This UK archive, funded by the University of Essex and the Economic
   and Social Research Council, is the largest such archive in the United
   Kingdom. It holds nearly 4,000 social science computer datasets, both
   historical and contemporary, that are in some way related to the U.K.
   (about the U.K., conducted by U.K. investigators, or of interest to
   U.K. users). For economists, datasets of particular interest include
   the CSO Macroeconomic Databank, the Family Expenditure Survey, and the
   Labour Force Survey. In addition, some of datasets contain
   multi-country surveys, so other countries are frequently included.
   Thus, this archive is of interest even to non-U.K. economists. Since
   the datasets are held under agreement with the depositors, one must
   contact the archive for information on how to obtain the data, some of
   which is available on-line (other formats include CD-ROMs and tapes,
   diskette, and DAT)
   
   To search ESRC's holdings, one can easily search their database,
   BIRON, via telnet. If an item of interest is found, further
   information on how to obtain the data can be found via email.
   
     # telnet://biron:norib@biron.essex.ac.uk
     # email: archive@essex.ac.uk
       
11.24 Statistics Canada

   Currently, Statistics Canada, the Canadian national statistical
   agency, provides information from their daily report, the Daily, on
   this site. It also contains information on ordering their
   publications, lists of offices, their classification systems,
   subscription information on their listserv, and ordering information
   on their CD-ROM database, CANSIM (which has some 520,000 time series
   on Canada).
   
   The last two weeks of material from the Daily is on the gopher and web
   servers. The web interface is particularly nice with well designed
   hypertext and integrated graphics. The last year of the Daily is kept
   on the ftp site which can be searched with either the gopher or web
   interfaces.
   
   Another section of this guide deals with Statistics Canada CANSIM, a
   fee-based collection of Canadian statistical data.
   
     # http://www.statcan.ca/
     # gopher://talon.statcan.ca:70/1/
     # ftp://talon.statcan.ca
     # Information: Michael Thoen <thoemic@statcan.ca>
       
11.25 Statistics Canada CANSIM

   This extremely extensive database (it has some 550,000 time series and
   occupies about a gigabyte of disk space) covers a very wide variety of
   social and economic data in Canada. Unfortunately, the data is not
   freely available, although customers can retrieve the data over the
   Internet through an agreement with the University of Toronto. For
   academic users, the database costs $995, though discounts are possible
   in some situations.
   
     # Information: Bill Graham, Statistics Canada <grahwil@statcan.ca>
       or Chris Leowski, University of Toronto <chris@epas.utoronto.ca>
       
11.26 Bureau de la Statistique du Quebec

   This site offers a fairly extensive amount of statistical material,
   both economic and demographic, on Quebec. Much of the material is
   available in English.
   
     # http://www.bsq.gouv.qc.ca/bsq/
       
+ 11.27 Canadian Industry Overviews
+
+  This site offers detailed cross sectional and some time series views
+  of some 230 Canadian industries, wih an emphasis on "production,
+  international trade, and detailed sector level performance." In the
+  near future, information on some 400 service industries will be added.
+  The amount of detail is impressive, you can find out the total
+  salaries and wages in the fish products industry rose 4.64% in
+  1988-89.
+  
+    # http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_ecnmy/sio/homepage.html
       
11.28 Ministry of Finance (Mexico)

   While the data at this site is not very lengthy (it generally covers
   just the last few years), it is rather broad. In addition, various
   reports and documents on the Mexican economy are available as well.
   
     # http://www.shcp.gob.mx/
       
11.29 Scottish Economic History Database, 1550 - 1780

   This database, funded by the by British Economic and Social Research
   Council, has data on crop yields, demographic data, price series, wage
   series, and weather statistics for the above mentioned dates. Detailed
   information on this dataset is on-line here, and is also in AJS Gibson
   and TC Smout, "Scottish food, wages and prices, 1550 - 1780,"
   Cambridge University Press, 1994. They ask that any users report use
   of this database to further the financial support for it, and that
   users cite its use.
   
     # http://www.ex.ac.uk/~ajgibson/scotdata/scot_database_home.html
       
* 11.30 H.M. Treasury (U.K.)

   While this site does not contain data, it does contain a large amount
*  of information on the workings of H.M. Treasury. Of particular
*  interest to economists are the entries "Budget Documentation" (with
*  extensive documentation on the budget), "Economic Briefing" (which
*  includes various reports), "Monthly Monetary Meetings," and "Reports
*  of the Panel of Independent Forecasters." There is also a large amount
*  of information about the Treasury itself.
   
   Two mailing lists (one on press releases, the other on new Internet
   offering by the H.M. Treasury) are described in the section titled "C
   - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods."
   
   They plan to offer expanded services in the future.
   
     # http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/
     # ftp://ftp.hm-treasury.gov.uk
     # Information: info@hm-treasury.gov.uk
     # Suggestions: editor@hm-treasury.gov.uk
       
+ 11.31 Praedicta - Israeli Economic Data
+
+  This company specializes in a wide range of data on Israel; in all,
+  more than 50,000 series are available. Of interest to economists is
+  their economic data, which includes demographic information, national
+  accounts, balance of payments, foreign trade, finance and taxes, price
+  indices and exchange rates, the labor market, and many other areas. It
+  is a fee-based service.
+  
+    # http://www.praedicta.com
       
11.32 Israel Information Service Gopher

   This gopher provides a variety of information on the state of Israel.
   Of likely interest to economists is the sections titled "Israeli
   Economic News."
   
     # gopher://israel-info.gov.il:70/1/
       
11.33 The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA)

   This private organization offers information on their forecasting
   activities (they produce a number of publications) and general
   economic studies. They also offer a substantial amount of data,
   including international data and thousands of time series on the
   Finnish economy, but one must register to use it.
   
     # http://www.etla.fi
       
11.34 Summary Information on the Dutch Economy at Rabobank

   This site, run by the large Dutch bank Rabobank, offers some current
   summary information on the Dutch economy. It also offers information
   on Rabobank itself.
   
     # http://rabobank.info.nl/engels/default.htm
       
11.35 Central Bank of Turkey

   This site offers a wealth of economic information on Turkey. Data
   includes Outstanding External Debt, Daily Exchange Rates, Interest
   Rates on Deposits, Treasury Wholesale Prices, Treasury Istanbul Wage
   Earners Index, SIS Wholesale Prices Index, SIS Consumer price Index,
   Consolidated Budget, Balance of payments, Weekly Monetary Aggregates,
   GNP at Fixed Prices, and SIS Monthly Industrial Production.
   
   Most of the information is via telnet, and the interface is a bit
   tricky to learn. Each time you use the system, use the logon of
   "tcmb". The first time you will be asked for some information, and
   then given a user code. It should be used for subsequent visits
   (again, given after logging on with "tcmb").
   
     # gopher://tcmb580.tcmb.gov.tr
     # telnet://tcmb:tcmb580.tcmb.gov.tr
       
11.36 Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Business & Economy Data

   Besides various sorts of business and summary economic information,
   this site offers a substantial amount of economic data on the Turkish
   economy. See the entry titled "Basic Economic Indicators," which has
   information both from the last few year and from 1923. Data is
   arranged into sections on population, demographic statistics, health,
   education and welfare, education and culture, justice, social security
   and social aid, agriculture, mining, power, manufacturing industry,
   construction, transportation and communication, tourism, domestic
   trade and services, foreign trade, prices and indices, money, finance,
   and national accounts. Each section contains from a few to as many as
   20 or more tables.
   
     # http://www.mfa.gov.tr/GRUPC/GRUPC.HTM
       
+ 11.37 India Economic Survey 1996 and Budget
+
+  This site has information on the 1996 budget of India, and the
+  Economic Survery, 1996.
+  
+    # http://alfa.nic.in/indiabudget/
       
+ 11.38 Reserve Bank of New Zealand
+
+  This trend setting central bank offers information about itself, its
+  most recent "Monetary Policy Statement," its forecasts, a summary of
+  recent New Zealand economic policy, some of its "Information
+  Pamphlets," and recent press releases and speeches. Finally, they
+  offer information on bank and bank regulation.
+  
+    # http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/
       
11.39 New Zealand Treasury

   Currently, this site offers material on recent budgets, and a
   substantial amount of information on general fiscal issues and New
   Zealand, such as their annual report, an overview of the country's
   financial and economic framework, some regulatory issues, etc.
   
     # http://www.treasury.govt.nz/
       
11.40 Australian Bureau of Statistics

   Besides offering fairly detailed summary information on Australia and
   its states and territories (in wks format), this server also has
   information on the ABS, its catalog, and press releases.
   
     # http://www.statistics.gov.au/
       
11.41 Japanese Macro Data

   This site contains some 20,000 macro series from Nikkei Needs. It has
   been reformatted into the ASCII format used by the BCI Data Manager.
   When you first use this site, be sure to read the warnings concerning
   some oddities in the data and details on how to search for it (the
   data are located in this database with a WAIS search).
   
     # econom10.cc.sophia.ac.jp/needs/index.htm
       
12 FINANCE AND FINANCIAL MARKETS
                                       
12.1 Other Sources

   There are five good places to search for this type of data (I have
   only placed some of the many resources I've come across here). The
   first is to turn to the Internet document that specializes in it, the
   misc.invest FAQ (i.e. the Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) of
   the Usenet newsgroup misc.invest). Besides detailing the many ways you
   can obtain financial data on the Internet, it also covers many topics
   of interest to investors.
   
   Another excellent starting point is the Kiwi Club Web Server. It
   contains links to just about every imaginable financial resource on
   the Internet.
   
   FINWeb also is an excellent starting point for those looking for
   financial data and information.
   
   The Financial Data Finder at Ohio State provides a very extensive list
   of financial data sources, both on and off the Internet.
   
   Finally, the Wall Street Research Net also provides a larger number of
   links that will be of interest to investors.
   
12.2 misc.invest FAQ

     # http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/cml/invest-faq/
     # ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/investment-faq/general
       
12.3 Kiwi Club Web Server

   This site, run by Richard D. MacMinn of the University of Texas,
   offers a large number of links to financial resources on the Internet.
   It is one part of a two part project; the other part is to make
   MacMinn's lectures and course material available on the web with links
   to relevant sources; this project is now picking up steam.
   
   This server is a good place to start for anyone interested in tracking
   down financial information on the Internet.
   
     # http://kiwiclub.bus.utexas.edu/finance/kiwiserver/kiwiserver.html
       
12.4 FINWeb

   FINWeb, "The primary objective of FINWeb is to list Internet resources
   providing substantive information concerning economics and
   finance-related topics." To this end, resources are broken up into the
   following categories: electronic publishing (both journals and working
   papers), databases, other servers in finance and economics,
   miscellaneous topics, and highly recommended general resources. It is
   another good place to look for financial market information.
   
     # http://www.finweb.com/
       
12.5 Financial Data Finder at Ohio State

   This site provides a number of pointers to financial datasets and
   other financial information both on and off the Internet. In addition,
   it lists information about on-line business libraries.
   
     # http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/dept/fin/osudata.htm
       
12.6 Wall Street Research Net

   This site is devoted to providing the investor with fundamental
   information. One can research a company on-line (including Canadian
   companies), read about the current state of the economy from presses
   releases and links to the major data generators, read extensive
   information about different markets, and read the current news. They
   also offer additional material that may be of interest, including
   Grant's Interest Rate Observer.
   
     # http://www.wsrn.com/
       
+ 12.7 Global Financial Data
+
+  To quote from Brian Taylor, who is the Presidnet of this service: " We
+  offer extensive historical financial data. On our site we provide free
+  over 700 years of inflation data, and 200 years of data on exchange
+  rates, interest rates and the stock market. We also provide long-term
+  data on stock market returns and inflation rates for almost 40
+  countries. Our database includes data on over 50 countries and
+  includes monthly data back to the 1690s."
+ 
+  To quote from their offerings:
+ 
+    # The Long-term Monthly Database includes over 500 series of monthly
+      data on stock markets back to 1693, exchange rates back to 1624
+      and inflation rates back to 1748. Over 50 countries are included
+      in the database.
+    # The United States Interest Rate Database includes 70 series of
+      weekly interest rate data. Data begin in 1835 on a monthly basis
+      and in 1872 on a weekly basis.
+    # The Foreign Interest Rate Database includes over 400 series of
+      monthly foreign interest rate data from 50 countries. Monthly data
+      begin in 1700 and go back to the 1800s for most major economies.
+      Discount rates, interbank rates, money market rates, government
+      bond yields and treasury bond yields are included.
+    # The United States Daily Stock Market Indices Database includes 75
+      series of daily stock market data. All major United States stock
+      market indices are complete back to their beginning. Daily data
+      begin in 1885.
+    # The Foreign Daily Stock Market Indices Database includes over 200
+      series of daily stock market data from 45 world stock markets.
+      Daily data begin in 1930.
+    # The United States Stock Market Sector Database includes over 350
+      series of weekly sector data back to 1918. Monthly data go back to
+      1871.
+    # The Foreign Stock Market Sector Database includes over 1300 series
+      of monthly sector data for 25 countries. Data begin in the 1920s
+      or earlier for the world's major stock markets.
+     
+  Some of these series, and summary information on the rest, is offered
+  for free, and the rest can be purchased. As appropriate, there are
+  frequent updates.
+ 
+    # http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/btaylor/globalfd.htm
       
12.8 Briefing by Charter Media

   This organization specializes in intra-day news, data, and analyses of
   financial markets. Thus, it is similar to Reuters, Telerate, etc., but
   is freely available. Their stock, dollar, and bond tickers are updated
   at specific times throughout the day. As needed, they update
   information on economic data and individual stocks (you can also get
   quotes on individual stocks and bonds). In addition, they offer
   information that might influence financial markets such as political
   stories, and also offer political, market, and economic forecasts.
   Finally, they offer a market brief and calendar.
   
     # http://www.briefing.com
       
12.9 Bloomberg Personal

   Bloomberg is one of the leading suppliers of financial market
   information. In this offering, which adds information to their TV
   show, you can read about a number of current financial market events.
   While this site offers less than their fee-based service (Bloomberg
   Terminal), it does supply a substantial amount of information: news,
   summary information on markets around the world, etc.
   
     # http://www.bloomberg.com
       
12.10 EDGAR (SEC)

   This database opened in January of 1994. It covers public filings by
   U.S. public companies made to the SEC from that data. It covers such
   things as 10K, 10Q, annual, quarterly reports, and many other items.
   
   Previously, this database was available only through Mead Data in
   either inconvenient locations or at very considerable expense. In an
   experiment, it was available at no cost over the Internet. The
   experiment was deemed a success, and now the SEC itself makes the data
   available.
   
   This database only covers filings made from 1994 on, for public
   consumption, and when made electronically by the filing company. Thus,
   it does not cover earlier years, current paper fillings, or non-public
   ones.
   
   There are a number of utilities that make using this large database
   easier. Some help you easily search for material, and another formats
   EDGAR fillings into WordPerfect format.
   
     # http://www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm
     # ftp://ftp.sec.gov/edgar
       
12.11 Martin Wong's and George Holt's Market Report

   This report briefly describes the day's activities in various
   financial markets. It includes the day's major activities in financial
   markets and releases of key economic data, while the latter has an
   extensive report on many markets (NYSE, NASDAQ, AMEX, foreign markets,
   interest rates, foreign exchange, etc.). The latter is also available
   from the mailing list EINVEST.
   
   Current and back issues can be found on the gopher at the Washington
   University at St. Louis (described in the section titled "MULTIPLE
   SUBJECT ECONOMIC SITES."
   
     # http://turnpike.net/metro/holt/index.html
     # telnet://guest@a2i.rahul.net/n/Current System Information/MarketReport
       
12.12 Public Domain Financial Data

   This site allows those with financial data they would like to share to
   place it at a common site. Thus, some caution might be advised since
   the data may not be "official." Details about this site can be found
   in the "README" file.
   
     # ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/archives/misc.invest
       
12.13 Polish Stock Market

   This site offers data on shares, bonds, financial results, and data
   from previous sessions. Information on shares is found in the "PGPW -
   rynek ascji" directory, for bonds in the "WGPW - ryneck obligacji"
   directory, and for financial results, in the "WGPW - walory"
   directory. Obviously, the language is Polish.
   
     # http://yogi.ippt.gov.pl/gielda/gielda.html
       
12.14 QuoteCom Data Service

   This service offers a variety of data on the U.S. financial markets,
   four London exchanges, five European exchanges, and Canadian
   exchanges. Data ranges from 15 minute old prices to historical prices.
   In addition, portfolios can be tracked and trading-oriented business
   news can be followed. For no charge, one can receive five quotes per
   day, along with basic balance sheet information from most any sort of
   financial market. Additional services are fee-based (educational and
   site licenses are available). For instance, daily data from about
   9,000 U.S. stocks since 1988, and daily data from U.S. commodity
   futures, foreign stocks and commodities contracts for the last few
   months, are available for a list price of $1.95 list per time series.
   Output can be retrieved in a number of ways, including email, ftp and
   the web. All users must register.
   
     # http://www.quote.com/
     # ftp://ftp.quote.com
     # email: services@quote.com ("help" in the body of the note)
       
12.15 Security APL QuoteServer

   This service offers free quotes of current stock and bond prices
   (along with some summary information) from the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ.
   It also has links to EDGAR, lets one look up the ticker symbol of a
   security, and also offers summary information on the stock market as a
   whole. In addition, there is a portfolio simulation game.
   
   It is designed for non-professional use. This company also offers an
   extensive array of professional products.
   
     # http://www.secapl.com/cgi-bin/qs
       
12.16 JP Morgan

   Besides general information on JP Morgan, this site has information on
   two general items of interest to financial economists. The first is
   extensive material on a number of their market indices. These include
   commodities, currencies, bonds and mortgages. Historical data is
   available as well.
   
   Second is their RiskMetrics program. With the increasing importance of
   financial fluctuations on firms' earning and balance sheets, JP Morgan
   is offering a system and data to help manage the resulting volatility.
   They forecast the market risk in more than 300 financial time series.
   Currently, this includes items in the bond markets, money markets,
   swaps, foreign exchange, equity indices, commodities, spread products,
   and new markets. Their market risk forecast is based upon an
   exponential moving average of volatility to rapidly capture periods of
   increased volatility. Not only does it include volatility in a series,
   it also includes cross correlations of the all series. However, they
   stress even with this data, sophisticated judgement is still required
   to correctly access risks. To that end, this data can be integrated
   with a number of third party risk management products.
   
   Each day, machine readable daily volatility and correlations are
   released, as are monthly figures.
   
   To access the web version, one must use a graphical web browser.
   
     # http://www.jpmorgan.com
     # ftp://ftp.jpmorgan.com
       
12.17 Student Investment Club at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University

   This site offers a number of links to financial markets, including the
   German stock market and other European markets. There is also
   information on capital markets in general.
   
     # http://www.wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de/AG/JWGI/
       
12.18 New Zealand Investment Center

   This site offers summary data on stock prices and other financial
   market data of New Zealand. There is also some information on New
   Zealand companies, and some government economic data.
   
     # http://www.charm.net/~lordhill/
       
12.19 InTechTra's Hong Kong Stocks Reports

   This site offers daily summary information on the Hong Kong Stock
   Market, and for a fee, a variety of additional information is
   available.
   
     # http://www.asiawind.com/pub/hksr/
     # Information: sllee@infinet.com
       
12.20 Fidelity Investment

   Not only does Fidelity offer information about investing, they also
   offer fairly detailed information on their products. One can even
   check their performance, including their Lipper rankings. You can also
   have prospecti mailed to you. In the late summer of 1996, they plan to
   make it possible for 401(k) and 403(b) holders to change their
   allocations on-line.
   
     # http://www.fid-inv.com/
       
12.21 The Vanguard Group, Inc.

   Like most other investment companies, Vanguard offers a web site with
   extensive information. This one includes a substantial amount of
   information for their mutual fund investors such as newsletters,
   announcements, retirement planning materials, and current fund prices.
   They have a particularly nice navigation graphic of the entire site.
   
     # http://www.vanguard.com/
       
12.22 NETworth

   This free service, funded by the mutual fund industry, offers an
   amazing amount of information on financial services for individuals,
   such as material on more than 5,000 mutual funds from Morningstar. It
   is said to be the best source of data on mutual fund on the Internet.
   
     # http://networth.galt.com/
       
12.23 Schwab Online

   Charles Schwab offers a complete set of information on their many and
   extensive products (including equities, fixed income and mutual funds)
   at this site. Just about every imaginable detail is covered.
   
     # http://www.schwab.com/
       
12.24 E*Trade Securities, Inc.

   E*Trade is another broker that has set up trading on the Internet. In
   addition, they offer free quotes.
   
     # http://www.etrade.com/
       
12.25 Lombard Institutional Brokerage, Inc.

   Lombard is one of a growing number of firms that offer on-line
   trading. In addition, to registered users (no fees involved), they
   offer a substantial amount of data: quotes, graphs, and research
   results. You can also set up an account on-line.
   
     # http://www.lombard.com/
       
12.26 Banks of the World via the Institute for Finance and Banking at the 
      University of Gottingen

   This site lists a number of banks that have a presence on the
   Internet, including those that actually bank on the Internet. It is
   organized geographically. They also offer a large number of links to
   financial sources and resources.
   
     # http://www.gwdg.de/~ifbg/bank_2.html
       
12.27 Huang's Weekly Futures Market Report

   Paul C. Y. Huang kindly provided this description of the service he
   provides: "This weekly document provides profit/loss percentages
   relative to initial margin deposit requirements for the major products
   of the respective exchanges. The column provides the reader with an
   overall perspective of the relative performance of the major products
   of the futures market. Since margin requirement is partly determined
   by the volatility of the underlying contract, the performance figure
   can be interpreted as return per unit of "risk adjusted capital."
   According to the author, no similar presentation is readily available
   from any other source. Futures performance data is followed by
   analysis and comments on selected markets. Recent issues are archived
   at the following economic/financial gophers: Babson College in
   Massachusetts, Sam Houston University in Texas, Temple University in
   Pennsylvania, Washington University in Missouri, Washington & Lee
   University in Virginia, and Rice University in Texas."
   
     # gopher://wuecon.wustl.edu:671/11/holt/weekfut
       
12.28 MoneyLine - Real Time Fixed Income Data

   MoneyLine obtains their data for the fixed income market from GovPX,
   which is owned by the 38 Primary Dealers in Treasuries and 5 of the 6
   brokers who deal with them. Thus, it is the primary source of real
   time information in the fixed income market. They list bids, offers,
   and transactions among the primary dealers, and they cover the
   following markets: "U.S. Treasury bonds, notes, and bills, money
   market instruments such as CD's, BA's, Fed Funds Rate, the Prime Rate,
   U.S. Agency bonds, zero coupon bonds and strips." In addition, they
   also offer "value-added analysis" information (such as bond
   calculators, spread analysis, etc., and news on these markets.
   
   While this is obviously a fee-based service, two-week trial accounts
   are available, and one can sign up on their web page. The actual
   interface is through telnet, where screens are automatically updated
   with the latest information as it occurs.
   
     # http://www.moneyline.com
       
+ 12.29 Market Broadcasting Corporation - Real Time FX, Fixed Income, and Money
+       Market Data
+
+  MBC provides "virtually all" the data from GovPX, which is the primary
+  provider of real time information in the fixed income market. They
+  also provide information on foreign exchange and the money market, as
+  well as news in these markets from around the world.
+  
+    # http://www.moneyline.com
       
