DATA Sources at Dalhousie

Comparative country data

International Financial Statistics (IMF)

Like the print publication of the same name this database is the definitive source for comparable time series on the world's economies back as far as 1946.  Helpsheet

OECD Health Data

Health Data contains data on the health systems of OECD countries including health status, medical resources, health expenditures, costs and flow, and non-medical determinants of health from 1960 forward.

World Development Indicators (WDI)

This database contains 550 socioeconomic time series for 226 countries and/or groups from 1960 to date.

Some freely available databases providing comparable data for socioeconomic research are:

Key Indicators of Developing Asian and Pacific Countries 2003

This online publication presents 38 PDF and XLS tables of time series data for the Asian Development Bank's 40 developing member countries (DMCs). The latest hard copy edition (2001) is shelved at REF HC 411 A754a in the Reference area of the Killam Library.

Laborsta

The data available here are an extract of LABORSTA, the Bureau's principal database. It consists mainly of annual time-series which serve to publish the ILO Yearbook of Labour Statistics. The application presents data covering 7 subjects in 23 tables.

OECD Statistical Portal

OECD Statistics Portal offers free statistical tables on a wide array of topics in; for example the Social Expenditure Database offers program level data back to 1980.

Pacific Exchange Rate Service

This is a exchange rate repository maintained by Werner Antweiler at the Sauder School of Business at UBC.

Penn World Tables 6.1

The Penn World Table provides purchasing power parity and national income accounts coverted to international prices for 179 countries for some or all of the years 1950-2000.

Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2004

DALKIL REF HA 755 A68, also available in hardcopy.

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Canadian data

These Canadian statistical sources are mainly from Statistics Canada with some redundancy, but do vary in complexity, ease of use, and cost/restrictions. For CANSIM references Dalhousie users should access the data via E-STAT.  Please contact Phyllis Ross if you are unable to access relevant data without being charged.

Bank of Canada

This website is a wealth of information for students of economics from scholarly papers to financial statistics data. Of particular interest is the dataBANK search interface which gives users access to 220 time series including foreign exchange rates, securities yields and various interest rates back to 1990. The selected data can be viewed and downloaded in spreadsheet format.

Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD)

free statistics on poverty, welfare, income and other social issues

Historical Canadian Macroeconomic Dataset 1871-1994

Prof. R. Marvin McInnis, Department of Economics, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Disseminated with permission by: Queen's University -- Social Science Data Centre.
Restrictions on use: Acknowledgement of source.

Canadian Election Studies

The Canadian electorate is the primary focus of the Canadian Election Study (CES). The main objective is to explain why people vote the way they do, to indicate what does and does not change during the campaign and from one election to another, and to highlight similarities and differences between voting and elections in Canada and in other democratic countries. For older cycles go to York University and click on Data and Reports on left.

Free Internet Publications

from the Stats Canada Web Site, includes the Historical Statistics of Canada; hard copy of this resource is shelved at HA 746 L43 1983

The Daily: all data released by Stats Canada must be announced in this daily flagship publication. I often find relevant CANSIM table and/or publication numbers from the Daily announcements which then can be used to access data more easily from the following sources.

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Canadian Data purchased by the Dalhousie University Libraries and/or restricted to Dalhousie faculty and students

The following tools are available only on Dalhousie campus, or via the Library proxy service for Dalhousie faculty and students only:

E-STAT

is a compendium of data sources including direct access to CANSIM II via Stats Can software (simple) and detailed Census data down to the Census Tract level.

CANSIM II

is Stats Canada data via the original CHASS interface which is not for the first time use (by subscription only)

Canadian Census Analyser

presents very detailed census data for most census geography including Dissemination Areas, for multiple years using the CHASS interface (by subscription only)

Trade Analyser

provides very detailed trade data via the CHASS interface (by subscription only)

DLI

is the subscription plan providing unlimited access to numerous Statistics Canada public use microdata files, databases and geographic files to students and faculty at participating institutions in accordance with the Conditions of Use. Easy access to the DLI files for Dalhousie researchers is provided through the IDLS interface whenever possible. For any files which are not available through the IDLS please contact the DLI contact for Dalhousie: Phyllis Ross

IDLS

is a web extraction interface from UWO's Social Science Computing.Laboratory. This system allows faculty and students from subscribing universities to select variables from a data file, and returns that data as an ASCII (raw data) file to the user's desktop for analysis with a statisticial software package (eg. SPSS, SAS, STATA). If you require a DLI file that is not available on the IDLS site please contact Phyllis Ross with your request.

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United States data sources

ICPSR Direct

is a new service providing direct access to the ICPSR data holdings for all students, faculty, and staff at ICPSR member institutions. ICPSR Direct represents a quantum leap in data distribution at ICPSR. With ICPSR Direct, any user with an authorized IP address from a member institution may download data from ICPSR, without going through a local campus representative. The ICPSR archive includes significant numbers of databases from other countries, including Canada.

Data FERRET:

this interactive extractor provides simultaneous access to numerous surveys produced by the U.S. Federal Government including the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the Current Population Survey (CPS).

Data on the Net

this is a megasite containing links to hundreds of sites containing social science data on the Web among other things.

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Other