Finance

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Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services)
Formerly known as the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR), this agency was reauthorized and renamed through the Healthcare Research and Quality Act of 1999. A "Data and Surveys" section contains links to:

• Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP and HCUPNet)
• HIVNet
• Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)
• HIV and AIDS Costs and Use
• Healthcare Informatics Standards

Asia Regional Information Center (ARIC) (Office of Regional Economic Integration (OREI))
Formerly the Asia Recovery Information Center, ARIC was reinvented in 2006 as the Asia Regional Information Center, with a focus on regional cooperation and integration in Asia and the Pacific. The site features the Integration Indicators Database, a set of indicators going back as far as 1990 in areas of trade, foreign direct investment, and finance, focusing on 47 "reporting countries" across Asia and the Pacific.

Bank for International Settlements (Bank for International Settlements (BIS))
The BIS is an international organization for fostering cooperation of central banks and international financial institutions. The Publications section of the BIS website includes the BIS Consolidated International Banking Statistics on the maturity, sectoral and nationality distribution of international bank lending to developing countries. The report is available as a PDF file, while the statistics are also available as CSV (comma-separated value) spreadsheet files.

Bureau of the Public Debt (U.S. Department of the Treasury)
U.S. Savings Bonds, Treasury bills and notes and bonds, and other public-debt-related resources are the subject of this site. Current and historical public debt statistics are updated daily.

Center for the Study of Innovation and Productivity (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)
The Center for the Study of Innovation and Productivity (CSIP) at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco undertakes to promote understanding of the role of innovation (particularly in technology) and productivity in economies at various levels. One unique contribution of the CSIP web site is the Tech Pulse index, tracking the health of the U.S. information technology sector. A separate Quick Stats section of the site looks at regional, national, and global indicators in information technology and productivity. The Data and Charting page of the CSIP site carries downloadable economic series such as real U.S. output per worker, IT industrial production in the U.S., semiconductor sales worldwide, and regional venture capital investments. Depending on the series, comparisons can be charted online across geographical regions or industry sectors. Users can also customize charts by sector, time-frame, or data type. While some of the series start in the early 1990s, others go back as far as 1977 or further.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) (Commodity Futures Trading Commission)
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), was created by Congress in 1974 as an independent agency with the mandate to regulate commodity futures and option markets in the United States. The Commission's semiannual Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) Financial Data Schedule contains selected financial data filed with the Commission. The information contained in the schedule includes data for each FCM including: the total amount of adjusted net capital, the required amount of adjusted net capital which must be maintained, and the excess adjusted net capital; the amount of customer funds required to be segregated from the FCM's own funds, and; the FCM's required foreign futures secured amount. Data are available here in HTML, ASCII, and Excel spreadsheet formats.

Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) (U.S. Bureau of the Census)
Provides data covering federal expenditures or obligations for the following categories: grants, salaries and wages, procurement contracts, direct payments for individuals, other direct payments, direct loans, guaranteed or insured loans, and insurance. Data is available in summary tables and downloadable self-extracting zipped datafiles in plain ASCII format. Datafiles are available at the detail level (state, county, and place geographic levels), individual state, U.S., combined state, and county aggregate. An online query system is available for the years 1993-2001.

CQ Moneyline (CQ)
CQ Moneyline packages campaign contribution data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on this site, for the election cycles from 1993-94 through the current cycle. Free information includes news briefs, federal candidate profiles, a donor lookup, PAC/party profiles, and more. Subscription information includes a soft money database, lobbying expenditures, and PAC contributions broken out by Committees of Congress.

DataZone (Economic Policy Institute (EPI))
The DataZone provides access to tables of United States historical labor market and income data, mostly on the national level but some at state & regional levels, that can either be viewed in PDF or downloaded in Excel. Though last updated in 2006, the historical statistics go back into the 1970s and earlier. The larger EPI site is kept current with analysis and briefing papers.

Department of Commerce (Department of Commerce)
Parent organization to the Economics and Statistics Administration, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Includes agency links. If you're not finding the one you're looking for, try the Site Search option.

Economagic (Economagic)
Initially set up in 1996 to provide economic time series for students in a class on applied economic forecasting, the Economagic site has grown to include over 100,000 time series, including: interest rates from the Federal Reserve; retail sales and building permits from the Census Bureau; labor, employment, CPI and PPI from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; stock market highs and lows; and more. Time series are available for free in ASCII format, sometimes broken up by advertising. For subscribers, time series are available as charts or Excel spreadsheets, and multiple time series can be saved in a personal workspace and transformed through various calculations.

Economic-Indicators.Com (R. Mark Rogers)
This companion site to the author's book Handbook of Key Economic Indicators (McGraw-Hill, 1998), Economic-Indicators.Com provides a streamlined list of links to online U.S. economic and financial reports and data, in addition to sites for economic news and analysis.

EDGAR Database (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission)
EDGAR, the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system, performs automated collection, validation, indexing, acceptance, and forwarding of submissions by companies and others who are required by law to file forms with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Education Finance Statistics Center (EDFIN) (National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), U.S. Department of Education)
The Education Finance Statistics Center (EDFIN) web site is the central NCES site for education finance information for United States elementary and secondary education. It includes an interactive tool letting users compare the finances of a school district with its peers. Also included are links to finance data and publications.

European Central Bank (ECB) - Statistics (European Central Bank)
The monetary union in Europe, with the euro as currency, has resulted in the founding of the European Central Bank. The ECB web site carries a statistics section that includes statistical press releases, euro area statistics, exchange rates and more. PDF versions of the ECB's Monthly Bulletin and corresponding .csv files are available.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Bank Data (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation)
Includes data from the FDIC publications Statistics on Banking, Survey of Real Estate Trends, and other data in spreadsheet or ASCII format.

Federal Election Commission (Federal Election Commission)
The FEC came onto the web scene in mid-February, 1996, and has been serving downloadable campaign finance data ever since. Both summary and detailed data are available for 1993-94 onward, by candidate, by PAC, or by Party Committee. Files are fixed-length and zipped, with "format" information accompanying each file. The anonymous FTP site is ftp://ftp.fec.gov .

Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER) (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
FRASER, a new initiative from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, has scanned historical statistical publications from the Federal Reserve as PDF files. Some information goes back as far as 1896! The FRED II database (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/) picks up where FRASER leaves off, allowing for the creation of uninterrupted time series, though users will have to hand-key any FRASER data they wish to manipulate.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)
The Federal Reserve of Minneapolis' Web information service offers national and regional economic indicators, text from The Region magazine, the fedgazette newspaper, the Quarterly Review and other research publications and Annual Reports. There is information on Economic Data, specifically economic indicators for the 9th district and U.S. indicators (including the Beige Book--summaries). It also contains interest and exchange rate charts, background information on the Fed, and more.

Federal Reserve Board Historical Data H.15 Selected Interest Rates (U.S. Federal Reserve)
The H.15 release contains daily interest rates for selected U.S. Treasury and private money market and capital market instruments. It is published weekly.

Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED II) (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
Over 1000 economic time series, going as far back as 1946 in some cases, and also quite current. FRED II, the second incarnation of the database, provides for online charts and downloads in both Excel and text format. (The original FRED database, discontinued in July 2003, carried only text files).

Federal, State, and Local Governments (U.S. Bureau of the Census)
The Federal, State, and Local Governments page from the U.S. Census Bureau provides links to data, documentation and reports from the Census of Governments (conducted at 5-year intervals) and related surveys including the Annual Survey of Government Employment, Annual Survey of Government Finances, State and Local Government Employee-Retirement Survey, State Government Tax Collections, and Quarterly Summary of State and Local Government Tax Revenue. Public education finance data is available as well, as school districts are among the local governments surveyed (in addition to county, municipal, township, and special district). The site also carries the Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) and the Federal Assistance Awards Data System (FAADS). Much of the data goes back to 1992, and is available as HTML, Excel or text files.

Financial Data Finder (Ohio State University)
Annotated financial data links, either searchable (the "interactive" option) or as an alphabetical list (the "text-based" option).

Foreign Labor Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The number of countries and years available varies, for the following subjects: Comparative Labor Force Statistics, Comparative Unemployment Rates, Consumer Price Indexes, and International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs for Production Workers in Manufacturing. Also includes reports and news releases.

FreeLunch (Moody's Economy.com)
Moody's Economy.com, home of the fee-based Dismal Scientist, has created a section of its site dedicated to free U.S. economic and financial time series. Billing itself as “The Web’s Largest Data Library,” FreeLunch republishes data from primarily U.S. government sources (including the Census Bureau, Federal Reserve, Bureau of Economic Analysis). Users select data frequency (annual, quarterly, monthly, sometimes daily) and whether a line chart or table is desired. The time series can go back several decades, depending on the subject matter, and are quite current as well. Check out the daily foreign currency exchange series! Free registration required.

Global Financial Data (Global Financial Data)
Global Financial Data bills itself as "the world’s most comprehensive historical financial database." A fee-based service, Global Financial Data may be accessed via various subscription or per-file download options. Users can determine which series are included through a simple keyword search or browsing through categories. This service is noteworthy for its international scope and how far back some of the time-series go. One interesting indicator is black-market rates for various currencies. Note: UW-Madison does NOT subscribe.

HCUPnet (U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research)
HCUPnet is part of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, developed and maintained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The HCUPnet interface provides access to national (U.S.) statistics about hospital stays, using data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), the Kids' Inpatient Database (KID), and the State Inpatient Databases (SID) for states that participate. Users can generate custom tables by selecting specific conditions of interest, outcomes or measures such as length of stay or in-hospital death, and types of patients or hospitals to compare. The resulting tables can be displayed in printable versions or saved in Excel (xls) format.

Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) (University of Michigan)
The web site for both Institute for Social Research (ISR), University of Michigan datasets. Both HRS and AHEAD are nationally representative longitudinal data collections begun in the early 1990s that examine retirement and the aging of society. Free registration is required to gain access to the data.

Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) Public Data (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC))
This site makes available reports from public data mandated by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) 0f 1975. Aggregate reports and disclosure reports from individual financial institutions back to 1999 are available online in PDF. Users can also retrieve HMDA disclosure reports from individual financial institutions. The FFIEC carries a similar site at http://www.ffiec.gov/cra/default.htm for reports resulting from the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, meant to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate.

Import/Export Price Indexes Handbook of International Economic Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, International Programs)
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' International Price program produces the Import and Export Price Indexes. An online interface lets users create custom tables from the past ten years of data in HTML or text format (CSV or tab-delimited). Flat files are also available for FTP.

Interactive Index of Economic Freedom (Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal)
In cooperation with the Wall Street Journal, the Heritage Foundation releases an annual report on world-wide economic freedom, scoring countries on a 1 to 5 index for factors such as corruption, trade barriers, the rule of law, and the black market. A profile for each country is provided. The web site includes HTML and PDF versions of the print publication, plus an online interface allowing searches and comparisons between countries from 1995 onward. The data can also be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet.

International Association of Insolvency Regulators (IAIR) (International Association of Insolvency Regulators (IAIR))
This site is a good starting point for personal bankruptcy statistics across a variety of countries. The association includes 16 member countries. Under the "Member Profiles" selection, each country has a profile that includes a link to a country-specific web site.

International Financial Statistics (IFS) online (UW-Madison subscription) (International Monetary Fund)
International Financial Statistics (IFS) online contains approximately 32,000 time series (monthly, quarterly, and annually) covering more than 200 countries and areas. IFS is a standard source of statistics on international and domestic finance, and reports, for most countries of the world, current and historical data on exchange rates, international liquidity, international banking, money and banking, interest rates, prices, production, international transactions, government accounts, and national accounts. Results can be saved in a variety of formats, including CSV, HTML, tab-delimited, or Excel. Note: UW-Madison subscribes via IP authentication.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) (International Monetary Fund)
The IMF home page provides links to news releases, publications, fund rates, and data standards, as well as featured topics. International Financial Statistics online, a IP-limited campus-wide UW-Madison subscription replacing the DISC CD-ROM subscription, is available from a separate URL at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.web/intfinstats,

MoneyTree Survey (PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Venture Economics, National Venture Capital Association)
The MoneyTree Survey is a quarterly study of venture capital investment activity in the United States. It measures cash-for-equity investments by the professional venture capital community in private emerging companies, from 1995 to the present. Data can be broken down by region, state, industry, stage of development, and financing sequence; breakdown by company requires the user to register with the site. Results can be viewed in HTML tables or downloaded as CSV.

National Information Center (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council)
The National Information Center (NIC) provides comprehensive information on banks and other institutions for which the Federal Reserve has a supervisory, regulatory, or research interest including both domestic and foreign banking organizations operating in the U.S. The NIC includes the organizational structure of financial institutions and financial information for some of those institutions. Historical information is available on the structure of all the institutions. Financial information is available for selected time periods.

National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) (National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), U.S. Department of Education)
The National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) is a comprehensive nationwide study designed to determine how students and their families pay for postsecondary education in the United States, and to describe some demographic and other characteristics of those enrolled. The first study NPSAS study was conducted during the 1986-87 school year; subsequent studies have been carried out during the 1989-90, 1992-93, 1995-96, and 1999-2000 school years. The data is available online in DAS (matrix) format.

New Beneficiary Data System (U.S. Social Security Administration)
The Social Security Administration's NBDS contains extensive information on the changing circumstances of aged and disabled beneficiaries. Based initially on a national cross-sectional survey of new beneficiaries in 1982, the original database has been expanded with information from administrative records and a second round of interviews in 1991. Variables measured in the original New Beneficiary Survey (NBS) include demographic characteristics; employment, marital and childbearing histories; household composition; health; income and assets; program knowledge; and information about the spouses of married respondents. Public use data and documentation may be downloaded from the site.

Office of Financial Management – State of Washington (State of Washington)
The Forecasting Division of the Office of Financial Management for the State of Washington “provides estimates of state and local population, monitors changes in the state economy and labor force, and conducts research on a variety of issues affecting the state budget and public policy.” One highlight of the site is the Washington State Data Book, the state’s statistical abstract. Washington only posts its most recent State Data Book (the 2005 edition was posted in January 2006) and recommends that its users follow up on the specific sources of the data to get the absolute latest figures. The State Data Book tables display in HTML but may be downloaded as PDF or Excel files. Also of interest on the OFM Forecasting Division site are a Criminal Justice Data Book and an Employer Health Insurance Data Book for the state of Washington. In addition, Washington conducts a biennial State Population Survey, with downloadable data posted on the site for 1998 through 2004.

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) (Office of Management and Budget)
Contains tables and text of FY 1996 to the present U.S. Budget and OMB circulars, as well as information on statistical programs and standards from the OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Office of Trade and Economic Analysis (OTEA) (Department of Commerce. International Trade Administration)
Lots of data tables under the categories of U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook, U.S. Foreign Trade Highlights, U.S. Foreign Trade Update, Foreign Trade Reference Room, and Trade Policy Information System. Also, this site provides access to State Export Data, as well as Metropolitan Area Exports.

SchoolMatters (Standard & Poor’s)
The stated purpose of the SchoolMatters website is to “give policymakers, educators, and parents the tools they need to make better-informed decisions that improve student performance.” To do this, the site provides a searchable database covering the United States at three levels: state, school district, and school. The content covers student performance; spending, revenue, and taxes; school environment; and community demographics. Data is compiled from various surveys from the National Center for Education Statistics; state departments of education; the U.S. Census Bureau; and college preparatory test vendors. A "Compare" tool allows users to create a downloadable side-by-side comparison of key performance information for up to 5 states, districts, or schools, while a “Create Your Own Table” tool allows users to create a customized table to download for up to 100 schools or school districts across a set of key indicators.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (Securities and Exchange Commission)
This site provides information on investor assistance and complaints, SEC digest and statements, current SEC rulemaking, enforcement division, small business information, as well as EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system) which allows users to retrieve publicly available filings submitted to the SEC from January 1994 to the present.

Social Security Death Index (Ancestry, Inc)
This index contains data from the Death Master File (DMF) from the Social Security Administration (SSA). It has over 77 million records of decedents created from SSA payment records. Fields include last name, first name, state issued social security number, birth data, death date, last residence and lump sum payment.

State Government Tax Collections (U.S. Bureau of the Census)
The State Government Tax Collections Survey provides annual state-by-state data for state tax revenue from 1992 onward. The data are not to be interpreted as state area data (state & local government taxing efforts combined), but apply solely to state government tax revenues. In this survey the concept of "taxes" is comprised of all compulsory contributions exacted by a government for public purposes, except employer and employee assessments for retirement and social insurance purposes. Summary tables are available in HTML, Excel, and text files.

State of the Cities Data System (SOCDS) at HUDuser (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development)
The SOCDS offers an interactive interface providing data on metropolitan areas, central cities and suburbs on the following subjects:

• demographic and economic data from the 1970 through 2000 U.S. censuses
• current employment statistics from the BLS’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics
• jobs, business establishments, and average pay from County Business Patterns data
• crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation
• building permit data from U.S. Census Bureau
• urban public finance data from the Census of Governments

Survey of Business Owners (SBO) (U.S. Bureau of the Census)
The Survey of Business Owners (SBO) is the current version of what was formerly called the Surveys of Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (SMOBE/SWOBE). The SBO is part of the Economic Census and is conducted every five years, providing information on selected economic and demographic characteristics for businesses and business owners in the United States by gender, ethnicity, and race.

Survey of Consumer Finances (Federal Reserve Board)
“The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is a triennial survey of the balance sheet, pension, income, and other demographic characteristics of U.S. families. The survey also gathers information on the use of financial institutions. The links to the surveys provide summary results of the surveys, codebooks and related documentation, and the publicly available data. Also included here are the data and related information from the 1962 Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers and the 1963 Survey of Changes in Family Finances. These surveys are the most direct precursors of the SCF. Similar information on the 1983 and 1989 Surveys of Pension Providers is provided as well.” The most recent SCF was conducted in 2001.

The Wisconsin Campaign Finance Project (Ken Mayer, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
The Wisconsin Campaign Finance Project aims to shed light on public election funding programs in the United States. State legislative races and the New York City Council are the primary focus, with campaign spending and election data posted for Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota (partial), Nebraska, New York City (partial), and Wisconsin. Click on the Data link to get to a highlighted map, which leads to data files in Excel.

Thomson Research (UW-Madison subscription) (Thomson Financial)
Thomson Research features a large collection of company information and analyst research reports on the web. It provides in-depth forecasts and analysis based upon research reports from over 980 of the world's leading firms and covering more than 30,000 companies worldwide. Note: UW-Madison subscribes via IP authentication.

Tracking the Global Recession (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has made available a recession-tracking tool with a collection of charts to follow the economic downturn across multiple countries (the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom). Reported alongside the current trend, each chart reports the average decline of the series over past recessions and the range of the declines. Economic indicators include industrial production, real income & real compensation, employment, and real retail sales, in addition to the gross domestic product and its components. Users may also create their own recession charts using data from the FRED database (Federal Reserve Economic Data.)

U.S. Federal Reserve Board Data Download (U.S. Federal Reserve Board)

The Federal Reserve Board of the United States has augmented its web site with a data download application. Data from five Reserve Board releases are available for download as of February 2009:

• Charge-Off and Delinquency Rates
• Commercial Paper
• Consumer Credit (G.19)
• Finance Companies (G.20)
• Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States (Z.1)
• Household Debt Service and Financial Obligations Ratios (FOR)
• Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization (G.17)
• Selected Interest Rates (H.15)

Data can be downloaded as XLS, CSV, or XML files, using either preselected components or components chosen by the user.

U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants (Greenbook) (U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID))
The Greenbook comprises an annual report of United States foreign aid, with each edition covering historical data back to 1946. The Greenbook web site offers the current Greenbook edition online in database format. Users can retrieve tables either in historical or constant dollars. Drop-down query menus allow users to select countries, programs and years, resulting in HTML table displays that can be downloaded as CSV or RTF. Greenbooks are also available as PDF documents, including past editions back to 1964.

Unemployment Insurance Program Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration)
This site carries detailed unemployment insurance program data, by state, for the United States. Data include tax rates, taxable wage bases, revenues, claimants, benefits paid, duration, exhaustions, and balances. Annual, quarterly, monthly, and weekly data available, going back different lengths of time (annual tables go back to 1938). Data formats vary: Excel, CSV, HTML, and/or text.

Wisconsin Campaign Finance Project (Ken Mayer, University of Wisconsin - Madison)
The Wisconsin Campaign Finance Project was founded "to provide researchers with authoritative data on public election funding programs throughout the U.S. We focus on state legislative races and the New York City Council." The project has posted campaign finance data for six states: Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, plus New York City. Data coverage varies between states, but generally covers from about 1990 to 2004 or 2006.

World Federation of Exchanges (World Federation of Exchanges)
Representing 56 member stock exchanges worldwide, this group's web site includes market statistics in PDF and Excel files. Statistics are grouped into Annual (each year since 1996), Monthly (each month since 1995), and Time series (since 1990), and are reported across member exchanges.

Yahoo! Finance--Major U.S. Indices (Yahoo Finance)
This site covers major U.S. stock indices, including the Dow Jones, NYSE, Standard & Poors, NASDAQ, and others. Data is available in table and spreadsheet format, with some historical data back to the 1970s. A link in the lefthand sidebar also leads to a similar site covering world indices.

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