Introduction

Growth and development data are economic indicators related to aggregate measures of output produced by a country. These include gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP), either measured at level, growth, or per capital figures.

Databases

Datastream with Eikon  

For training videos go to the Refinitiv site

https://training.refinitiv.com/eikon/

https://training.refinitiv.com/datastream/

Datastream  is the best resource to find and download growth and development data. This database provides economic time series and macro forecast. You can access this database at the City Tower library. level 2.

In Datastream, you can locate growth and development data by selecting Macro tab and then Econ Indicators.

Under National Accounts, growth and development data for a specific country will be presented by selecting the country.  

More details on the data can be accessed by selecting the corresponding mnemonic. For instance here is the detail for AUGDP..B, a mnemonic for Australian quarterly GDP data.

to download the above data into an Excel file,  use DFO by selecting Thomson Reuters Datastream tab and then Time Series Request. Type the mnemonic(s) in Series/List box. One can download as many as series you need by inputing your mnemonics in the Series/List. Start Date, End Date and Frequency of data can be also set.

The mnemonics of data series can be found by clicking Find Series.

For instance, when downloading the Australian GDP data for the last 20 years, the results will be as follow. 

Web-based resources

World Development Indicators

The World Bank provides global development data through the World Development Indicators (WDI) database. In WDI, we can find:

• GDP (current US$)
• GDP growth (annual %)
• GDP per capital (current US$)
• GNI, either measured by Atlas method (current US$) or purchasing power parity (PPP) (current international $)
• GNI per capita, either measured by Atlas method (current US$) or purchasing power parity PPP (current international $)

For Stata users, life will be easier if one can utilise the two main commands to download WDI data into a Stata file as follows:

• wbopendata (please see Accesing World Bank Open Data in Stata) 
• wdireshape (please see Jeanty. 2010. Using the world development indicators database for statistical analysis in Stata. The Stata Journal, Vol. 10, Number 1, pp. 30-45.)

Penn World Table

Penn World Table, also well-known as PWT, provides international comparison data on relative levels of income, output, inputs and productivity. PWT database covers 167 countries over the period 1950 and 2011. The current version is 8.0 where we can find:

• Real GDP, employment and population levels
• Current price GDP, capital and TFP
• National accounts-based variables
• Exchange rates and GDP price levels
• Shares in Output-side real GDP at current PPPs
• Price levels, expenditure categories and capital

The PWT data can be downloaded in several formats: Stata, MS Excel and Matlab. 

International Financial Statistics

The most relevant database in International Financial Statistics (IFS) related to growth and development indicators is World Gross Domestic Product