International Finance and Macroeconomics Catalogue of Data Sources

This page presents a catalog of data sources made available by researchers as well as researchers' description of commercial data sources.  Data are arranged by topic.  Please make sure to cite relevant papers if using the data. If you would like to contribute a data set or data description to this page, please e-mail your proposal to Galina Hale and Michael Klein. NBER has arranged a subscription to ORBIS for its members. Please see slides for details. The list of datasets available through this initiative is here. Please contact Galina Hale should you have any questions.

Data Made Available by Researchers

• Capital controls and macroprudential
• Exchange rate regimes
• Financial crises
• Fiscal data
• Bank data
• International price data
• International capital flows, external positions, and interest parity
• Financial Development and Central Banking
• Trade data
• Firm data

Chenzi Xu gives an overview of historical data sources here. Andy Rose provides data for most of his papers on his research page. Please cite appropriate papers if using the data.

Capital Controls and macroprudential

Joshua Aizenman, Menzie Chinn, and Hiro Ito. Annual indicators to quantify the degree of achievement along the three dimensions of the "trilemma" hypothesis: monetary independence, exchange rate stability, and financial openness, for more than 170 countries from 1970 through 2014. All materials can be found here. Also available are replication files . Please Cite, as original source, Joshua Aizenman, Menzie D. Chinn and Hiro Ito (2010). "The Emerging Global Financial Architecture: Tracing and Evaluating the New Patterns of the Trilemma's Configurations," Journal of International Money and Finance, Vol. 29, No. 4, p. 615-641.

Menzie Chinn and Hiro Ito. Annual indicator of capital account openness, a de jure measure for 182 countries, 1970 - 2012. All materials can be found here . Please Cite, as original source, Menzie D. Chinn and Hiro Ito (2006). "What Matters for Financial Development? Capital Controls, Institutions, and Interactions," Journal of Development Economics, Volume 81, Issue 1, Pages 163-192 (October).

Andrés Fernández, Michael Klein, Alessandro Rebucci, Martin Schindler and Martín Uribe. Separate annual indicators of controls on inflows and controls on outflows for 10 categories of assets for 100 countries, 1995 - 2013. Slides with description, paper, as well as Excel and Stata datasets are available on Uribe's page. Please cite Andrés Fernández, Michael Klein, Alessandro Rebucci, Martin Schindler and Martín Uribe, "Capital Controls Measures: A New Dataset," IMF Economic Review, vol. 64(3), pages 548-574, August 2016.

Gurnain K. Pasricha, Matteo Falagiarda, Martin Bijsterbosch, Joshua Aizenman. Quarterly indicators of the number of capital flow management measures in 18 emerging market economies, 2001Q1-2015Q4. Includes both policy actions on capital controls and currency-based measures. Separate unweighted and weighted indices. Separate indices for inflow easing, inflow tightening, outflow easing and outflow tightening. Separate indices for policy actions on all types of flows, and for policy actions on non-FDI flows. Excel file and technical appendix . Presentation slides. Please cite: Pasricha, G.K., Falagiarda, M., Bijsterbosch, M. & Aizenman, J. (2015), "Domestic and Multilateral Effects of Capital Controls in Emerging Markets", NBER Working Paper No. 20822. Updated in Pasricha, G.K. (2017) "Policy Rules for Capital Controls" Bank of Canada Staff Working Paper No. 2017-42.

Ilhyock Shim, Bilyana Bogdanova, Jimmy Shek and Agne Subelyte. Monthly indicators and detailed description of nine types of non-interest rate policy actions (in total, 1,111 actions) affecting housing markets for 60 economies from January 1980 (or earliest date available) to June 2012. Article with description . Excel file . Please cite, as original source, Ilhyock Shim, Bilyana Bogdanova, Jimmy Shek and Agne Subelyte, "Database for policy actions on housing markets,” BIS Quarterly Review, September 2013, pp 83–95; and Kenneth N Kuttner and Ilhyock Shim (2016) "Can non-interest rate policies stabilize housing markets? Evidence from a panel of 57 economies," Journal of Financial Stability, 56, 31-44, which uses the dataset.

Eugenio Cerutti, Ricardo Correa, Elisabetta Fiorentino, and Esther Segalla. Quarterly indicators of changes in the intensity of usage of several widely used macroprudential instruments, covering 64 countries during 2000Q1 to 2014Q4. Slides with description. Stata file. Excel file with dataset and documentation. Please Cite, as original source, Cerutti, E., R. Correa, E. Fiorentino, and E. Segalla (2017), "Changes in Prudential Policy Instruments - A New Cross-Country Database," International Journal of Central Banking, Volume 13, Issue 1, Pages 477-503 (March).

Exchange Rate Regimes

Jay Shambaugh. Exchange rate regime data (peg, non-peg, soft peg, relevant base country), de facto indicators for 177 countries, 1960 2014,. Description (pdf). Data (.dta). Please cite, as original source, Jay C. Shambaugh (2004). The Effect of Fixed Exchange Rates on Monetary Policy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 119, no. 1, Pages 301 352 (February).

Financial crises

Beatrice Scheubel and Livio Stracca. Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN) data base. Measures included: (i) own foreign exchange reserves, (ii) IMF loan facilities, (iii) regional financing arrangements (RFAs), (iv) central bank swap lines. The data covers the existing access to the GFSN of over 150 countries annually, together with a comprehensive list of variables that may be useful to understand financial integration and the role of the GFSN in supporting it, including crisis episodes, a measure of private capital flows, and measures of capital flow reversals for a subset of countries. The dataset covers at a maximum the years 1960-2014. Slides with description. Please cite Scheubel and Stracca, 2016, “What do we know about the global financial safety net? Rationale, data and possible evolution," ECB Occasional Paper No. 177.

Galina Hale. Dates of sovereign debt restructuring and dates on which negotiations leading up to these restructurings began. Emerging markets, 1980-2002. PDF file , Stata file . Please cite Carlos Arteta and Galina Hale (2008) "Sovereign debt crises and credit to the private sector," Journal of International Economics, 74(1), p. 53-69.

Luc Laeven and Fabián Valencia. Comprehensive list of banking crisis dates for the period 1970-2013 together with information on fiscal costs and output losses following these banking crises and information on policy responses (including liquidity support, recapitalizations, asset purchases, and guarantees). Detailed description of variable definitions and sources to be found in accompanying paper: Luc Laeven and Fabián Valencia (2013) "Systemic Banking Crises Database" IMF Economic Review 61, 225-270. Please cite this paper if using the data.

"Andrew Metrick and Paul Schmelzing. Banking-Crisis Intervention database, 1257-2019. Documenting 1,886 policy interventions by public and private authorities into the banking sector across 138 countries since the Renaissance. The interventions are classified into twenty categories, based on the specific area of bank balance sheets targeted. The database also contains details about the announcement date of the intervention, its size, the income level of the affected country, narrative details, as well as further literature. All canonical banking crisis chronologies are incorporated into the dataset, and a large sample of interventions outside existing chronologies is presented. Please cite the data as "Andrew Metrick and Paul Schmelzing, 'Banking-Crisis Interventions, 1257-2019'".

Aitor Erce, Enrico Mallucci, and Mattia Picarelli. Monthly data on domestic-law sovereign debt restructurings. Data span from 1980 to 2018. The dataset can be found on Enrico Mallucci’s website, at the following link. Please cite, as original source, Erce, A., Mallucci, E. and M. Picarelli (2022)."A journey in the history of sovereign defaults on domestic-law public debt," Working Papers 51, European Stability Mechanism.

Fiscal data

Carlos A. Vegh and Guillermo Vuletin. Database on tax rates (value-added, corporate income, and personal income tax rates) for 76 countries, 1960-2017. Paper and dataset. Please cite, as original source, Carlos Vegh and Guillermo Vuletin (2015). “How is tax policy conducted over the business cycle?” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Vol 7 (August), pp. 327-370. Complementary papers related to fiscal measurement and identification issues are available on Vuletin’s website.

Kose A., S. Kurlat, F. Ohnsorge, N. Sugawara. A comprehensive cross-country database of fiscal space. The database covers up to 200 countries over the period 1990-2016, and includes 28 indicators of fiscal space grouped into four categories: Government debt sustainability; Balance sheet composition; External and private sector debt; Market access. For additional information, links to Excel and Stata files, and citation information, see the World Bank page.

Bank data

Stijn Claessens and Neeltje van Horen. Full ownership information over the period 1995-2013 for 5,498 banks active in 138 host countries, including for each bank year of establishment, year of inactivity, ownership (foreign or domestic) and if foreign owned the home country of the majority shareholder. Database is linked to Bankscope for balance sheet information. Slides with description. Please cite Claessens and Van Horen (forthcoming), "The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Banking Globalization," IMF Economic Review. Paper and data.

International price data

Juvenal, L. and I. Petrella, I. A comprehensive dataset of terms of trade of developing countries. This link contains an excel file with export prices, import prices, commodity export prices, and commodity import prices for a sample of 38 emerging and developing economies from 1980 to 2019. Please cite, as the  original source, Di Pace, F., Juvenal, L. and I. Petrella (2020). “Terms-of-Trade Shocks are Not all Alike,” CEPR Discussion Paper 14594.

The Billion Prices Project periodically shares micro-price databases that can be used for academic research.
See the BPP Data page for a list of databases that are publicly available at this time. Slides with description. 

The Center for International Price Research posts public archives of historical international price data. These data are absolute, local currency, retail prices (not index numbers) by city as often used by statistical agencies in the construction of their aggregate CPI indices. We welcome contributions of similar international micro-price archives by other researchers. Presentation slides. Data archives.

Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi, Luis Felipe Cespedes, and Alessandro Rebucci. Quarterly real house price indices for 57 countries with time-varying coverage from 1970:Q1 to 2012:Q4. The data set can be found on Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi's website, at the following link. Please Cite, as original source, Cesa-Bianchi, A., L.F. Cespedes, and A. Rebucci, (2015). "Global Liquidity, House Prices, and the Macroeconomy: Evidence from Advanced and Emerging Economies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 47, Issue S1, No. 1 (March-April 2015).

International capital flows, external positions, and interest parity

John D. Burger, Francis E. Warnock, and Veronica Cacdac Warnock. KF*, a natural level around which portfolio inflows oscillate, annually and quarterly for up to 191 countries going back as far as 2000; end date is 2021. KF*gap, the difference between actual portfolio inflows and KF*, quarterly for up to 125 countries going back as far as 2000q4; end date is 2021q4. Data, as well as a ReadMe file with more details, are at https://sites.google.com/view/francis-warnock/kfstar. Please cite, as the original source, Burger, John D., Francis E. Warnock, and Veronica Cacdac Warnock (forthcoming). A Natural Level of Capital Flows. Journal of Monetary Economics

Bada Han. Dataset on the currency composition of external liabilities of twenty major emerging market economies. The dataset is constructed using the different sources from central banks, statistical authorities, and the data in preceding papers. The dataset provides information at both the aggregate and the sectoral levels. The aggregate level dataset covers from 2004 to 2019 although the data availability varies among the emerging market economies. The sectoral level dataset shows the foreign currency debt assets, foreign currency liabilities, and equity assets of six different sectors: central bank, general government, banking financial corporations, nonbank financial corporations, nonfinancial corporations, and households from 2010 to 2018. The dataset and the paper with more information on the dataset can be found on Bada Han’s website. Please cite, as the original source, “Original Sin Dissipation and Currency Exposures in Emerging Markets,” Manuscript, Bank of Korea.

A. Benetrix, D. Gautam, L. Juvenal and M. Schmitz. Currency composition of the International Investment position database for 50 countries for the period 1990–2017.  A key characteristic of this dataset is the use of available actual data, mainly sourced from an IMF survey sent to country authorities on the currency composition of the main IIP components, complemented with estimates. The dataset contains asset, debt asset, liability, and debt liability currency weights. Data can be found here. Please cite, as the original source, Benetrix, A., Gautam, D., Juvenal, L., Schmitz, M., 2019. "Cross-Border Currency Exposures. New Evidence Based on an Enhanced and Updated Dataset." IMF Working Papers 19/299, International Monetary Fund.

Luis-Diego Barrot. The Debt of Nations (DNA) Database presents a comprehensive database of gross government debt to GDP ratios, covering a sample of 130 countries. The database covers the period 1900-2020 for 60 advanced and emerging countries, and over 1960-2020 for the remaining emerging and developing countries. The related paper presents a framework that closely follows the UN, IMF, and WB International Standards of Government Statistics and National Accounts to evaluate 50 existing databases on Government Debt. Once the framework has been applied to these databases, the Debt of Nations Database is created. Please cite, as the original source, “The Debt of Nations: A Database of Gross Government Debt 1900-2020”, forthcoming Policy Research Working Paper  (Washington, DC) 2021, World Bank Group.
Main data and paper: website

Hiro Ito and Robert McCauley. Annual data of the currency composition of foreign exchange reserves for 74 countries, 1999–2020. The data files in Excel and STATA as well as data presentation slides are available here. Please cite Hiro Ito and Robert McCauley (2019). “Currency Composition of Foreign Exchange Reserves.” Journal of International Money and Finance, Volume 102 (April 2020).

Robin Koepke and Simon Paetzold. (1) Monthly data on non-resident portfolio flows to emerging markets for 18 countries, 1995 to present. (2) Meta-data on the use of capital flow data in the empirical literature on the drivers of capital flows. All materials can be found here. Please cite, as original source, Robin Koepke and Simon Paetzold, 2020, “Capital Flow Data: A Guide for Empirical Analysis and Real-Time Tracking,” IMF Working Paper No. 20/171 (Washington: International Monetary Fund).

Matteo Maggiori, Brent Neiman, and Jesse Schreger. The Global Capital Allocation Project website contains data and codes for firm level security aggregation, cross border reclassification of firms based on nationality, and capital flow data.

Laura Alfaro, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, and Vadim Volosovych. International Capital Flows Database. Measures of net public and private capital flows for a large cross-section of developing countries, considering both creditor and debtor side of the international debt transactions.  Includes FDI, portfolio equity, and debt. 1970-2013. See page for description and data download.   Please cite Alfaro et al., 2014, "Sovereigns, Upstream Capital Flows and Global Imbalances," Journal of European Economic Association, 22(5), 1240-1284.

Wenxin Du, Joanne Im, and Jesse Schreger. CIP Deviations between Government Bonds. This dataset measures covered interest rate parity deviations between government bond yields. In supplemental material, we outline how to download all of the raw data to construct the different components of the measure. We discuss how this measure can be used to quantify local currency sovereign credit spreads and convenience yields on government bonds. Data and documentation. Please cite as original source: Du, Wenxin and Jesse Schreger (2016). "Local Currency Sovereign Risk." Journal of Finance, 71, 1027-1070; Du, Wenxin, Joanne Im, and Jesse Schreger (2018). "The U.S. Treasury Premium." Journal of International Economics, 112. 167-181.

Philip Lane and Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti. External Wealth of Nations (EWN) updated data on external assets and liabilities for over 210 economies for 1970-2015. Data. Please cite Gian M Milesi-Ferretti and Philip R. Lane "International Financial Integration in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis," IMF WP115, 2017.

Stefan Avdjiev, Bryan Hardy, Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan, and Luis Servén. Data set of gross capital flows by sector. Contains quarterly series of international debt capital inflows and outflows, broken down by sector (banks, corporates, and sovereigns) of the domestic economy. The dataset features a balanced panel of 85 countries for inflows and 31 countries for outflows between Q1 1996 and Q4 2020. The data file in Excel is available here. Please cite, as the original source: Avdjiev, S, B Hardy, Ş Kalemli-Özcan and L Servén "Gross Capital Flows by Banks, Corporates, and Sovereigns", Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming.

Financial Development and Central Banking

Katsiaryna Svirydzenka. Annual indices that summarize how developed financial institutions and financial markets are in terms of their depth, access, and efficiency and aggregate indices of financial institutions development, financial markets development, and the overall level of financial development for 183 countries, 1980-2013. Data. Please cite Katsiaryna Svirydzenka (2016). "Introducing a New Broad-based Index of Financial Development." IMF Working Paper 16/5. Washington: International Monetary Fund (January).

Carola Binder. Quarterly balanced panel dataset of political pressure on 118 central banks from 2010Q1 through 2019Q1, constructed using a narrative approach, by hand-coding reports from Business Monitor International and Economist Intelligence Unit. The updated data in Stata and Excel formats are here. Please cite Carola Binder (2019) "Political Pressure on Central Banks."

Trade data

Prakash Loungani, Saurabh Mishra, Chris Papageorgiou and Ke Wang. Newly constructed dataset on trade in services for 192 countries from 1970 to 2014, broken down into one- and two-digit disaggregation resulting in as many as 27 services export sectors. Data, sources, descriptions, and other related material can be found here. Presentation slides. Please cite, Prakash Loungani, Saurabh Mishra, Chris Papageorgiou and Ke Wang, “World Trade in Services: Evidence from A New Dataset,” IMF Working Paper 17/77.

Firm data

Data from official sources

See Data Descriptions for information about accessing data sets

International asset flows and positions:

BIS International Banking statistics: data description by Galina Hale
IMF Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS): data description by Stephanie Curcuru
BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey on FX and derivatives markets: data description by Andreas Schrimpf. Data .

Bank data

Federal Reserve International Banking data sources: introduction by Linda Goldberg
The Bundesbank’s Research Data and Service Center: description by Stephan Bender, Claudia M. Buch, and Marin Eisele; 2019 Update by Jens Orben and slides.

Data from commercial sources

Note: these data typically require a subscription and are not available for free. See data description for details.

International asset flows and positions:

Emerging Portfolio Fund Research, Inc: data description by Stephanie Curcuru

Firm-level data

Balance sheet and income statements data from ORBIS/AMADEUS Database: data description by Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan  and  NBER working paper by Kalemli-Ozcan et al. (2015)

Other archives

See descriptions for accessing data

Historical series

Historical Financial Statistics is a free, noncommercial data set offered by the Center for Financial Stability. Coverage includes exchange rates, central bank and commercial bank balance sheets, interest rates, money supply, inflation, international trade, government finance, national accounts, and more. The focus is data from roughly 1500 to 1950, although it has earlier and later data.

Data- and idea-sharing pages

DBnomics: The world's economic database is a free platform, developed by the CEPREMAP (French research center), that aggregates publicly-available economic data released by national and international statistical institutions. It includes more than 70 billions series from different providers such as BIS, ECB, Eurostat, INSEE, IMF, ESRI (Japan), Federal Reserve, OECD, World Bank, US BEA, with the purpose of simplifying retrieval of economic data and allowing reproducible results. All the codes are free. Examples of use. Presentation slides.

Halle Institute for Economic Research International Banking Library:

description by Lena Tonzer