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Penn World Table (PWT)
PWT provides purchasing power parity (PPP) and national income accounts converted to international prices. The European Union or the OECD provide detailed purchasing power and real product estimates for their countries and the World Bank makes current price estimates for most PWT countries at the GDP (gross domestic product) level.
Data classification: Aggregated on the national level
Region: Global, 182 countries
Time period: 1950-2014
Format: MS Excel, SAS
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The index of Economic Freedom
The Heritage Foundation’s index covers 10 freedoms – from property rights to entrepreneurship, assigning a grade in each using a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the maximum freedom. The ten component scores are then averaged to give an overall economic freedom score for each country. The ten components of economic freedom are: Business Freedom, Trade Freedom, Fiscal Freedom, Government Spending, Monetary Freedom, Investment Freedom, Financial Freedom, Property rights, Freedom from Corruption and Labor Freedom.
Data classification: Aggregated on the national level
Region: Global, 186 countries
Time period: 1995-present
Format: MS Excel
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Economic Freedom of the World
The Fraser Institute's index measures the degree to which the policies and institutions of countries are supportive of economic freedom. The cornerstones of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to compete and security of privately owned property. Forty-two variables are used to construct a summary-index and to measure the degree of economic freedom in five broad areas: (1) Size of government; (2) Legal structure and security of property rights; (3) Access to sound money; (4) Freedom to trade internationally; and (5) Regulation of credit, labor and business.
Data classification: Aggregated on the national level
Region: Global, 157 countries
Time period: 1970-present
Format: MS Excel
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World Development Indicators
The primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.
Data classification: Aggregated on the national, regional (supranational), continental, and country group level
Region: Global, 217 countries
Time period: 1960-present
Format: MS Excel -
Human Development Indicators
The Human Development Report (HDR) is an independent report commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It is the product of a selected team of leading scholars, development practitioners and members of the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) of UNDP. The goal of the HDR was to put people back at the center of the development process in terms of economic debate, policy and advocacy, by going beyond income to assess the level of people’s long-term well-being.
Data classification: Index, aggregated on the national level
Region: Global, 188 countries and territories
Time period: 1980-present
Format: HTML, MS Excel
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The CIRI Human Rights Data Project
The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset contains standards-based quantitative information on government respect for 15 internationally recognized human rights. It is designed for use by scholars and students who seek to test theories about the causes and consequences of human rights violations, as well as policy makers and analysts who seek to estimate the human rights effects of a wide variety of institutional changes and public policies including democratization, economic aid, military aid, structural adjustment and humanitarian intervention.
Data classification: Aggregated on the national level
Region: Global, 202 countries
Time period: 1981-2011
Format: MS Excel
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Corruption Perceptions Index
Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) measures the perceived level of public-sector corruption. The CPI is a "survey of surveys", based on 13 different expert and business surveys.
Data classification: Indexes of nation states
Region: Global, 183 countries
Time period: 1995-present
Format: HTML
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Bribe Payers Index
Transparency International’s Bribe Payers Index ranks the leading exporting countries in terms of the degree to which their companies are perceived to be paying bribes abroad. Conducted with in-depth interviews with private sector leaders in emerging market economies, which combine to account for over 60% of imports of all emerging market economies.
Data classification: Indexes of nation states and industrial sectors
Region: 28 emerging market economies
Time period: 1999-2011
Format: HTML, PDF
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Worldwide Press Freedom Index
Reporters sans frontiers’s Worldwide Press Freedom Index based on surveys of country experts. The World Press Freedom Index measures the level of freedom available to journalists in 180 countries using the following criteria – pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, legislative environment, transparency, infrastructure, and abuses.
Data classification: Indexes of nation states
Region: Global, 180 countries
Time period: 2002-present
Format: HTML, PDF -
Angus Maddison’s Statistics on World Population, GDP and per capita GDP
Provides estimates for GDP (gross domestic product), GDP growth and population at the national and global levels. Time-series data from 1820 and onwards.
Data classification: Aggregated on the nation state level
Region: Global, 161 present and historical nation states
Time period: Year 1 to present
Format: MS Excel
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World Income Inequality Database
The UNU-WIDER (United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economic Research) World Income Inequality Database (WIID) collects and stores information on income inequality for developed, developing and transition countries. The dataset includes two different Gini coefficients on income inequality calculated on nation state populations and population groups.
Data classification: Aggregated on the nation state level
Region: Global, 179 countries
Time period: 1961-2013, some time-series
Format: MS Excel