Selected Resources for POLS 490S (Open Economy Politics)
Fall 2006

Emory's Electronic Data Center

General Social Science Data Resources

Macro/Country-Level Data Resources

Micro/Individual-Level Data Resources

CD-ROM/Non-Web Data Resources

Emory's Electronic Data Center (217 Woodruff Library)

http://einstein.library.emory.edu - The Data Center home page

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/links.shtml - The Data Freeway, a thematically-organized collection of links to on-line data sources

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/help_index.shtml - Help Pages for databases and data management

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/citation_guide.html - Guide for citation of electronic data sources

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/contact.shtml - Data Center contact information and hours

GENERAL SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA RESOURCES

ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research)
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/
The ICPSR is the largest collection of Social Science Data in the world. Topics included in the archive include: economics, government, health care, crime, education, etc. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory. The Data Center also maintains an archive of ready-to-use ICPSR datasets which are accessible via the search engine on the Data Center home page.

MACRO/COUNTRY-LEVEL DATA RESOURCES

Economic Data:

Eurostat
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union. Eurostat collects statistical information from the member states of the EU. Much of their data are accessible on-line here. The EDC also has a DVD database with more extensive time-series coverage (see below).

International Labour Organization
http://www.ilo.org
The ILO is the main international labor-rights advocacy group in the world and has brought together a variety of information about labor rights and working conditions internationally. You can access their databases directly at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/support/lib/dblist.htm.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) International Financial Statistics
http://www.imfstatistics.org/imf/imfbrowser.aspx?branch=ROOT
The IFS is a standard source of statistics on various aspects of international and domestic finance. Please note that this site is restricted to the Emory community. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory. There is also a CD-ROM version of the IFS available in the Data Center.

Penn World Tables
PWT is a good starting point for basic world economic data during the period 1950-2004. The most recent version of the PWT is available at http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/. An older version with coverage from 1950-1992 (and some variables not yet available in the newest version) can be found at http://datacentre.chass.utoronto.ca/pwt/.

SourceOECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
http://new.sourceoecd.org
SourceOECD is an online service that provides full-text access to OECD studies, periodicals, and statistics (1960 forward). Included are annuals, outlooks, policy reviews, conference proceedings, analytical reports, guidelines, working papers, all periodicals, and 27 statistical databases. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory.

World Development Indicators (World Bank)
http://devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/
The World Development Indicators Website provides convenient access to nearly 600 indicators on over 200 countries. Data is generally available from 1960 forward. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory. There is also a CD version of the WDI available in the Data Center.

Political Data:

Budge, Keenan, and Woldendorp
ftp://einstein.library.emory.edu/pub/Electoral_Politics/budge/
Data on national election results and governing coalitions in post-WWII Western Europe, up to 1995. Please refer to the codebook in order to understand the Excel spreadsheet that contains the data.

Comparative Political Data Sets (CPDS)
http://www.ipw.unibe.ch/content/team/klaus_armingeon/comparative_political_data_sets/index_ger.html
The CPDS were produced by scholars at the University of Berne. They focus on OECD countries and on post-communist countries and contain much data on the structure of political institutions, as well as data on demographics, electoral results, and ideological compositions of governments. There are also variables for female participation in parliament. Please note the preferred citation format.

Database of Political Institutions
http://go.worldbank.org/2EAGGLRZ40
This database was put together in part by Phillip Keefer at the World Bank and provides data on the political institutions and structures of different countries in the world from 1975 to 2006. Additional documentation are also available here. Please note the authors' preferred format for citing their data.

Elections in Western Europe Since 1815
http://einstein.library.emory.edu/euroelect
Emory's Electronic Data Center provides instant access to Daniel Caramani's detailed collection of European election results. Election results are available in a variety of different statistical formats for easy access and anlaysis.

Political Risk Services (PRS) Group Data
http://einstein.library.emory.edu/Risk-Data.html
The Data Center's holdings include data resources from the PRS Group and other sources that measure "risk" in the form of political (in)stability and institutional quality (e.g. levels of corruption).

"Political Strength of Political Parties by Ideological Group in Capitalist Democracies"
http://www.marquette.edu/polisci/Swank.htm
This dataset, which was compiled by Duane Swank at Marquette University, provides annual data on vote shares, legislative seats, and cabinent portfolios for different idelogical aggregations of political parties in various OECD countries. The data and documentation are available near the bottom of the site.

Social Data:

Comparative Welfare States Data Set (CWSDS)
http://www.lisproject.org/publications/welfaredata/welfareaccess.htm
The CWSDS is a joint effort by comparative welfare-state scholars such as Evelyne Huber, Charles Ragin, John D. Stephens, and Duane Swank. The data cover 18 OECD countries from 1960 onwards and include many economic, political, and policy variables.

Global Market Information Database (GMID)
http://www.portal.euromonitor.com/portal
GMID is produced by Euromonitor International and contains time-series data (1977-present) on a very wide range of economic and social indicators such as income, GDP, consumer expenditures, and population demographics. The data are available through both Excel-ready spreadsheets and .pdf reports. GMID is also accessible via Databases at Emory.

Golden-Wallerstein-Lange Project on Unions, Employers, Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations
http://www.shelley.polisci.ucla.edu/data/index.html
To quote the website, "[this] dataset contains mainly annual data on unions, employers, industrial relations and collective bargaining in 20 OECD countries from 1950 to 2000."

PovertyNet: Data on Poverty
http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/data/index.htm
PovertyNet has brought together a variety of datasets pertaining to the study of poverty, along with other resources relevant for international development and economics. Be warned - the World Bank tends to change addresses for websites without warning.

MICRO/INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL DATA RESOURCES

Comparative Study of Electoral Systems
http://www.cses.org
This site contains data and documentation for a cross-national collection of election studies. The CSES combines microdata on respondents with data at different levels of geography (i.e. data on respondents' electoral districts and on the political institutions of their countries) and focuses on themes such as how macro-level variables such as electoral systems affect political attitudes.

Eurobarometer Homepage
http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/
The homepage for the Eurobarometer series of European public opinion polls. The European Union has been conducting the Eurobarometer series amongst the publics of EU member-states since the early 1970's. They provide a dynamic measure of European attitudes toward economic, political, and social attitudes within the European Union. The European Commission provides access to a wide variety of reports produced from the Eurobarometer series of studies. The microdata for many Eurobarometers are also available from the ICPSR. The Data Center has an extensive collection of Eurobarometers, including studies conducted in Central and Eastern European countries. The Central Archive for Empirical Social Research also has a search engine for locating Eurobarometers that might be applicable for your research; this engine is located at http://www.gesis.org/en/data_service/eurobarometer/search/index.htm.

International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)
http://www.issp.org/
The ISSP is an ongoing effort devoted to cross-national research on social attitudes. In addition to asking general questions about attitudes towards various social issues, the ISSP series also includes special topic modules focusing on matters such as national idenitity, the role of government, and gender roles. The Data Center has many ISSP data files available here.

World Values Survey Series
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/
The World Values Survey is "a worldwide investigation of sociocultural and political change. It is conducted by a network of social scientist at leading universities all around world. The survey is performed on nationally representative samples in almost 80 societies on all six inhabited continents." It is an excellent source for cross-national survey data and is a widely-referenced resource. The Data Center has all four "waves" of the World Values Survey available here.

CD-ROM/NON-WEB DATA RESOURCES

Banks Cross-National Time-Series (CNTS) Data Archive
The Banks CNTS Data Archive contains time-series data from 1815-2005 on a wide range of political, economic, and social indicators. An older version of the archive is available here.

Eurostat Statistics DVD
The Eurostat Statistics DVD is a very comprehensive source for economic and social data for EU members at both the national and sub-national/regional level. Some of its databases also include data for countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to the DVD in the Data Center, there is also an on-line interface. More recent data from this database are also now available directly from the Eurostat website. The Eurostat interface does not cover as many years as does the DVD, but it will allow users to download data into spreadsheet formats. Please note that none of the interfaces is entirely user-friendly.

International Almanac of Electoral History, by Thomas Mackie and Richard Rose
Available in Woodruff Reference. The International Almanac of Electoral History provides national-level electoral results for legislatures (and, where relevant, presidential elections) going back as far as the late 1800's.

OECD Health 2008
The OECD Health 2008 database contains an extensive amount of data on health indicators, health-related lifestyle matters, and health policy for developed countries.

A complete list of the Data Center's non-web databases is available here. The databases are accessible via the Data Center's public workstations.

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