Country Economic Reports: Getting Started

This guide will lead you to appropriate resources for the country analysis project.

Each of the sources listed in this box will give you a sizeable overview of a country's economic environment. Start with these to get a general view of the country's situation; additionally, these overviews may help answer many of the assignment's questions directly.

Search Tips:

• to focus your search, use the limits on the left side of the result page: select a Resource Type filter, pick a date range, etc. Hit the Newspaper Search button to limit to those.
• learn more about LibrarySearch

GDP by component
For GDP measures, your best bet is probably Data-Planet Statistical Datasets. Search by keyword, or better yet, go to "Browse by Subject">International; for European countries, then pick A) Eurostat>Economy & Finance>National Accounts> Pick your country from the list. In the Table name box, pick GDP & Main Components (Current Prices).>In the Variable Name box, scroll to Not seasonally adjusted data-Final consumption expenditures of households: Percentage of GDP. Download that file.  Then scroll down the list, finding Final consumption expenditures of general government: Percentage of GDP, then Gross fixed capital formation: Percentage of GDP, then Exports: Percentage of GDP and Imports: Percentage of GDP, downloading each file in turn. These are the technical terms for the 3 main components of GDP that you may have learned: Consumption + Investment (gross fixed capital formation) + Government + (Exports-Imports) = GDP.

For Defense, on the main search screen in Data Planet, just search for Defense GDP, and you should find a data series from the World Bank's World Development Indicators database that will let you pick your country and download the data.

Alternate sources of GDP: B) International Monetary Fund>World Economic Outlook>GDP Metrics, or C) Penn World Tables.