Finding global economic statistics is easy. Isn't it?

Sean Townsend
Data Librarian
London School of Economics and Political Science.


Economics and particularly business, are amongst the most popular areas of
study for University students. Certainly outside of the specialist
sciences, they remain the most marketable of subjects for prospective
employees. This growth pattern has moved in parallel, perhaps by
coincidence, with a minature explosion in the resources available to
economists across the globe. This knowledge boom enables researchers to
find out just about any information concerning a national economy, and in
some cases the data spans several decades and is disaggregated across
various themes.

The biggest challenge at the moment is very simply, how to find the right
information within this ever increasing and diverse landscape. The old
days of consulting tried and tested official sources are gone. Today
economists can browse websites and cd-roms that boast data series in the
hundreds of thousands. Drilling down and mining these resources is perhaps
the most valuable research skill any social scientist can have today. As
the expectations for dissaggregation continues to rise, the need for
roadmaps and guiding lights becomes ever more pressing. This paper aims to
summarise the nature of the problem, citing some examples, and also to
provide a brief outline of the key resources that economists use today.
Emphasis will be placed on European sources but will also include
reference to global organisations such as the OECD, and content providers
such as Primark.


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Sean Townsend completed his Masters degree at the
Institute of Historical Research in London in 1994 and
then went on to work for the History Data Service at the
Data Archive, University of Essex. Sean was recruited
by the London School of Economics in 1998 to establish
its first data service and has been based at LSE now for
just over two years.