Economic information – Reference at Newman Library

Economic Data for North Korea

An Economics class is currently researching countries using economic data. Students have been logging on to chat and asking where to find GDP, PPP and other economic indicators. We all know about the standard country data sources including World Bank open data and the IMF International Financial Statistics (in Periodicals). But what happens when the student needs data on North Korea, a country not covered by the IMF?

Here is one way to proceed. Check out the Europa World Yearbook (REF JN1 .E85). It includes basic data pages but it will also tell you if NK belongs to any international organizations. North Korea is a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as the United Nation’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

The UN puts very little of its data on the web but you can find the annual Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific (from ESCAP) in reference HC411.U4A23 and their Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific in reference HA1665.S73.

ASEAN has economic data about its member countries on the web site including a PDF version (almost 300 pages) of its Statistical Yearbook.

I also found this blog from a policy researcher who follows the economy of North Korea and he posted an extensive list of sources that can be used for economic research http://www.nkeconwatch.com/north-korea-statistical-sources/

I haven’t looked at Datastream or Bloomberg but they might be worth a try.

FRED Adds IMF Data

This December the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis added a collection of IMF data to its database of U.S. and international economic time series, FRED. The data includes 399 financial statistics and monetary aggregates including interest rates, exchange rates, and measures of M1, M2, and M3.

Students will like this resource because of its easy to use interface. The data opens in a graph with options to download or view the underlying data or to save the graph as a pdf.

This data from the IMF is not free elsewhere but can be found in Datastream and in the paper copies of the IMF’s International Financial Statistics Yearbook (at REF HG 61 .I57)

New research from Federal Reserve Bank of NY re impact of recession on New York’s school district finances

I thought the following report, new from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, might be of interest: “The Impact of the Great Recession on School District Finances: Evidence from New York,” Rajashri Chakrabarti and Elizabeth Setren (no. 534, December 2011)
JEL codes: H40, I21, I28

This summary was prepared by the Federal Reserve Bank:
Despite education’s fundamental role in human capital formation and growth, there is no research that examines the effect of the Great Recession (or any other recession) on schools. The authors’ paper begins to fill this gap. Exploiting detailed data on school finance indicators and an analysis of trend shifts, they examine how the Great Recession affected school funding in New York State. While Chakrabarti and Setren find no evidence of effects on either total revenue or expenditure, there were important compositional changes to both. There is strong evidence of substitution of funds on the revenue side–the infusion of funds from the federal stimulus occurred simultaneously with statistically and economically significant cuts in state and local financing, especially the former. On the expenditure side, instructional expenditure was maintained, while other categories such as transportation, student activities, and utilities suffered. Important heterogeneities in experiences are also observed by poverty level, metropolitan area, school district size, and urban status. Affluent districts were hurt the most; the New York City metro area, especially Nassau County, sustained the largest losses in terms of both revenue and expenditure. The authors findings promise to facilitate an understanding of how recessions affect schools and of the role policy can play in mitigating the consequences.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr534.html