Basic information on financial databases: cook books, tips and tricks & economic news

This blog contains schematic easy to grasp - hands on - help in performing searches in economic databases, making work sets and making them inter-exchangeable between the databases.

* Disclaimer. I am not a finance professional. Most posts are the result of personal findings.

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All presented images are scaled and can be enlarged to original size (click the picture).

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2/04/2014

Macro Economic Data (benchmark rates) - IFS, World Bank open data, UN Monthly bulletin of statistics, Eurostat and Datastream compared

How to compare country performance if you arer not interested in the opinions of the rating agencies, or when you are interested in the criteria they use in order to rate countries?

This post aims to show a handful options to retrieve macro economic data.
Shown are examples from IFS, World Bank open data, UN Monthly bulletin of statistics, Eurostat and Datastream.

For Example: Interest rates.
Generally Government Bonds asre considered Risk Free investments (high guarrantee of money back, plus interest) The interest is considered the general inerest rate of any given country. The higher the interest a country has to pay when a bond matures, the riskier the investment is considered. Country ratings by the rating agencies like Moody's, Fitch en Standard & Poors are based on this concept.

IFS (International Financial Statistics - IMF)
Is, when you know the route, actually very simple.















- Choose Data Source















- IFS























Select Country

































This table shows exchange rates, interest rates (T-Bills, or risk free) , GDP etc.


World Bank (open data)
Starting page.























By country opens the option for an interactive map. (e.g. China)
Steps: by Country > select country name > (scroll down until )









Also optional is is Button Development Indicators.











 Next > Data Bank (annuals)















The Link Indicators provides 5 yr figures
The option By topic:

United Nations Monthly Bulletin of Statistics













Most selections can be made here.












Results













Eurostat (EU)


































Results


Datastream
(assuming you are familiar with Datastream, otherwise I refer to these pages  = all my blog items dfealing with Datastream)
Method: I'll be searching for the 10y Germany benchmark bond, which represents the interest rate.

 Selecting Interest rates Advanced Criteria Search









- interest rates









Criteria search Germany benchmark


















 Results

  



You can also use the Free Text search
 Search term benchmark and then select interest rates (you can play with this)


















Next select Germany. As you can see the 10y bonds are already presented.













The rest is the same as in tyhe advanced example.
 
Another way of retrieving the interest rates is to work with Bond Indices (risk free).
Example is through the Free text Search.











Results.






















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