ECHS 3067: Research Seminar in Economic History II

A thorough guide from University of Minnesota Libraries, including how to cite missing information

The Data Rescue Project and their Data Rescue Portal is a coordinated effort among a group of data organizations, including IASSIST, RDAP, and members of the Data Curation Network. It serves as a clearinghouse for data rescue-related efforts and data access points for public US governmental data that are currently at risk. "We want to know what is happening in the community so that we can coordinate focus."

The End of Term Web Archive captures and saves U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations. The EOT has thus far preserved websites from administration changes in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020.

This collection contains digital versions of United States Government documents as well as other government documents.

This project from academic librarians at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities and University of Illinois, Urbana - Champaign is an attempt to track removed and modified government information and resources, to help the public see the scope of what has been removed or modified, and to point to where preserved copies can be found, if possible. There is a form where anyone can add entries for missing gov information and a publicly viewable spreadsheet of all the entries received.

Allows you to search among screen captures of web sites over time, with over 411 billion web pages saved. Start with a known URL to explore past iterations of a website and its content.

Allows you to retrieve vintage versions of economic data that were available on specific dates in history.

This is the new platform for accessing recent Census Bureau data. FYI, the Census Bureau stopped releasing new data in American FactFinder (AFF) at the end of June 2019 and transitioned to data.census.gov for data releases formerly on AFF.

Browse data sets by topic, or search the data catalog. You can limit your results to geospatial data sets. Federal and non-federal (state, county, municipal, etc.) data sources are available.

Links to some of the most useful and popular economics data sources, categorized by data type

This site lists a number of possible data sets which may be relevant to this course.

FRASER is a collection of scanned historical documents from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (St. Louis Fed). Some historical statistics that are not available in FRED may be found in FRASER.

FRED (from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis/St. Louis Fed) compiles macro data from a variety of government and other sources. FRED is a database of over 383,000 economic time series from 82 sources. You can download data in Microsoft Excel and text formats and view charts of data series.

GeoFRED alows you to create, customize, and share geographical maps of data found in FRED.

The Global Repository of Income Dynamics—GRID—is an open-access international database that provides a wealth of micro statistics on income inequality and income dynamics at the individual level. All statistics in the database have been computed from administrative records data on earnings histories from each country and harmonized for comparability. As of Nov. 2022, there are 13 countries in GRID: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the US. The plan is to expand the coverage of GRID to 25+ countries in the very near future.

This is a portal for historical statistics, macro and micro, of a number of countries including the U.S.

Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas visualizes Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s transformations during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Drawing on 1850, 1880, and 1910 census data, it shows how migration, residential, and occupational patterns shaped the city. The Digital Atlas breaks new ground by locating each person counted in the Census at their home address, sometimes before the street grid was even established. This is a living project that will expand to include all five boroughs up to the 1940 census.

Measure of America provides easy-to-use yet methodologically sound tools for understanding the distribution of well-being and opportunity in America and stimulating fact-based dialogue about issues we all care about: health, education, and living standards.
The hallmark of this work is the American Human Development Index, an alternative to GDP and other money metrics that tells the story of how ordinary Americans are faring and empowers communities with a tool to track progress over time. The Index is comprised of health, education, and income indicators and allows for well-being rankings of the 50 states, 436 congressional districts, county groups within states, women and men, and racial and ethnic groups. Through national and state reports, thematic briefs, and interactive websites such as DATA2GO.NYC, Measure of America aims to breathe life into numbers, using data to create compelling narratives that foster greater understanding of our shared challenges and greater support for people-centered policies.

The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) provides population, housing, agricultural, and economic data, along with GIS-compatible boundary files, for geographic units in the United States from 1790 to the present.

This features source tables, time series tables, and GIS boundary files for spatial analysis applications. Using NHGIS: An Introductory Guide is a very good place to start!

This guide, managed by Marie Concannon of the University of Missouri Library's Government Information Department, points to consumer prices and wages reported in primary sources for each decade back to the 1700s. Whenever possible, they refer to retail price and wage averages as reported in government publications. When those are not available, they use figures listed in other contemporary sources such as commercial catalogs, travel guides and newspapers. This site is based on freely available historic resources, mostly from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRASER® digital library and the HathiTrust Digital Library. To understand the value of a historic price or wage in current dollars, they recommend the website MeasuringWorth.com.

Prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers for the Joint Economic Committee, provide economic information on gross domestic product, income, employment, production, business activity, prices, money, credit, security markets, Federal finance, and international statistics.

Clio Infra provides a number of interconnected databases containing worldwide data on social, economic, and institutional indicators for the past five centuries, with special attention to the past 200 years. These indicators allow research into long-term development of worldwide economic growth and inequality. The collected data have been standardized, harmonized, and stored for future use. New indicators to study inequality have been developed. The datasets are accessible through the Clio Infra portal which also offers possibilities for visualization of the data.

Links to some of the most useful and popular economics data sources, categorized by data type

DHS are nationally-representative household surveys that provide data for a wide range of monitoring and impact evaluation indicators in the areas of population, health, and nutrition. You can find data on knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Step-by-step guidelines for dataset users from registration to dataset analysis are available. Datasets are available for free after a simple registration process.

Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union.

Gapminder aims to provide resources for better understanding data on poverty - including graphs, quizzes, videos, photos, and human interest stories.

This is the world’s most comprehensive data set on how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. Launched with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the database has been published every three years since 2011. The data are collected in partnership with Gallup, Inc., through nationally representative surveys of more than 150,000 adults in over 140 economies. The 2017 edition includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. And it adds new data on the use of financial technology (fintech), including the use of mobile phones and the internet to conduct financial transactions.

The Global Repository of Income Dynamics—GRID—is an open-access international database that provides a wealth of micro statistics on income inequality and income dynamics at the individual level. All statistics in the database have been computed from administrative records data on earnings histories from each country and harmonized for comparability. As of Nov. 2022, there are 13 countries in GRID: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the US. The plan is to expand the coverage of GRID to 25+ countries in the very near future.

Employment & labor migration statistics from the International Labour Office (ILO)
Features: Create your own table from available data sets (select variables); Exportable into CSV format

This is a household survey program housed within the Survey Unit of the World Bank's Development Data Group that provides technical assistance to national statistical offices (NSOs) in the design and implementation of multi-topic household surveys. LSMS surveys have been conducted in dozens of countries around the world. The LSMS website hosts many of these surveys - for others, they provide links to the websites of the relevant national statistics offices.

International & U.S. immigration statistics from the Migration Policy Institute, independent think tank in Washington, DC.

The Montevideo-Oxford Latin American Economic History Database "MOxLAD" provides statistical series for a wide range of economic and social indicators covering the Latin American countries for the period 1870-2010.

From the United Nations Statistics Division, the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics Online presents current economic and social statistics for more than 200 countries and territories of the world. It contains 55 tables, comprising over 100 indicators, of monthly, quarterly and annual data on a variety of subjects illustrating important economic trends and developments, including population, industrial production indices, price indices, employment and earnings, energy, manufacturing, transport, construction, international merchandise trade, finance and national accounts.

Free, open-source global issues data such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality indicators. Our World in data is an online scientific publication that works on making progress against the world’s largest problems by providing research and data about it. The publication is a collaborative efforts between researchers of University of Oxford and non-profit organization Global Change Data Lab.

Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is the longest running longitudinal household survey in the world, starting in 1968 with a nationally representative sample of over 18,000 individuals living in 5,000 families in the United States. Information on these individuals and their descendants has been collected continuously, including data covering employment, income, wealth, expenditures, health, marriage, childbearing, child development, philanthropy, education, and numerous other topics.

This guide, managed by Marie Concannon of the University of Missouri Library's Government Information Department, points to consumer prices and wages reported in primary sources for each decade back to the 1700s. Whenever possible, they refer to retail price and wage averages as reported in government publications. When those are not available, they use figures listed in other contemporary sources such as commercial catalogs, travel guides and newspapers. This site is based on freely available historic resources, mostly from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRASER® digital library and the HathiTrust Digital Library. To understand the value of a historic price or wage in current dollars, they recommend the website MeasuringWorth.com.

UN Data provides statistical time series for countries from around the world covering a wide range of economic and socio-demographic topics. It includes descriptions of the international sources and definitions used in compiling the data.

The DataBank is a compilation of a number of World Bank data products, the most significant one being World Development Indicators. It includes time series data from as early as 1960.

World Development Indicators (WDI) is the World Bank’s premier compilation of cross-country comparable data on development. The World Development Indicators is a compilation of relevant, high-quality, and internationally comparable statistics about global development and the fight against poverty. The database contains 1,600 time series indicators for 217 economies and more than 40 country groups, with data for many indicators going back more than 50 years.

Afrobarometer is non-partisan, pan-African research institution conducting public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, the economy and society in 30+ countries repeated on a regular cycle. A leading source of high-quality data on what Africans are thinking.

The Standard Eurobarometer was established in 1974. Each survey consists of approximately 1000 face-to-face interviews per country. Reports are published twice yearly. Special Eurobarometer reports are based on in-depth thematic studies. Flash Eurobarometers are ad hoc thematic telephone interviews conducted at the request of any service of the European Commission.

General Social Survey (GSS) contains a standard 'core' of demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal questions, plus topics of special interest. Many of the core questions have remained unchanged since 1972 to facilitate time-trend studies as well as replication of earlier findings.

The AmericasBarometer, LAPOP’s largest survey research project, is a periodic study of 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere, with stratified nationally representative samples drawn in each country, a common questionnaire core, and country-specific modules. It is the only scientifically rigorous comparative survey of democratic values and behaviors that covers all independent countries in North, Central, and South America, as well as a significant number of countries in the Caribbean. The AmericasBarometer measures attitudes, evaluations, experiences, and behavior in the Americas using national probability samples of voting-age adults. Standardizing methods and a common core questionnaire permit valid comparisons across countries and over time on topics including the economy, rule of law, state capacity, trust in institutions, individual values, corruption, security, and more. The AmericasBarometer was launched in 2004/05, with 11 countries, and quickly grew to cover 34 countries in the Americas. The latest round of the AmericasBarometer was carried out in 2021 and includes over 64,000 interviews in 22 countries.

Arab Barometer is a nonpartisan research network that provides insight into the social, political, and economic attitudes and values of ordinary citizens across the Arab world. We have been conducting high quality and reliable public opinion surveys in the Middle East and North Africa since 2006. We are the longest-standing and the largest repository of publicly available data on the views of men and women in the MENA region. Our findings give a voice to the needs and concerns of Arab publics.

AsianBarometer represents the largest ever, comparative survey in Asia, covering East, Southeast, South and Central Asia. It focuses on daily lives of ordinary people (bumi putra) and their relationships to family, neighborhood, workplace, social and political institutions and market place. Country-wide face-to-face surveys use standardized instruments designed around a common research framework.

Latinobarómetro is an annual public opinion survey that involves some 19,000 interviews in 18 Latin American countries, representing more than 400 million inhabitants.

The World Values Survey is a global network of social scientists studying changing values and their impact on social and political life, led by an international team of scholars, with the WVS association and secretariat headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. The survey, which started in 1981, seeks to use the most rigorous, high-quality research designs in each country. The WVS consists of nationally representative surveys conducted in almost 100 countries which contain almost 90 percent of the world’s population, using a common questionnaire. The WVS is the largest non-commercial, cross-national, time series investigation of human beliefs and values ever executed, currently including interviews with almost 400,000 respondents. Moreover the WVS is the only academic study covering the full range of global variations, from very poor to very rich countries, in all of the world’s major cultural zones.