Library Guides: PL 209 World Politics: Country and statistical data

Country Profiles in Library Databases

Among the Library databases, there are some resources that collect country reports and information. Some of them are strictly political, others are more business oriented.

In order to get a comprehensive knowledge, you should explore more than one single resource.

Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
includes full text country economic reports from the selected sources such as EIU, Global Insight, ICON Group and CountryWatch.
Search tip 1: type the name of a country and limit the results by publication type Country Report

Search tip 2: type the name of a country and "country review"
CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online) This link opens in a new window
CIAO includes an atlas that provides country data gathered from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
It covers a very wide range of subjects related to International Politics, such as:
- Security
- Economics
- Development
- Foreign Policy
- International Relations
- Diplomacy
- Governance
- Defense Policy
- European Union
MarketLine Advantage This link opens in a new window
Includes country macroeconomic outlooks and PESTLE analysis.
Search tip: type the name of the country and select Country Profiles
Content includes:
- industry profiles
- country and city profiles
- theme reports
- case studies
- analyst insights
- company news
- financial deals
and more.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
You can search for news, risk, and economic overviews about a specific country.

In the Guided Search section:
1. Choose Country Info in the What are you interested in? box.
2. Choose a country name from the Which country? drop-down list.
3. Choose a specific source from the Choose a source drop-down list. Your options include All Sources, Recent news stories, Country Risk Overview, Political Risk Overview, and Economic Overview.
4. Click Search. Your results appear.
News sources provided by Nexis Uni include:
- national and regional newspapers
- international news
- news transcripts
- newswires and press releases
Legal material includes:
- U.S. Federal and state case law
- codes
- regulations
- legal news
- law reviews
Business content includes:
- international legal information
- business news journals
- company financial information
- industry and market news.
Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista includes country reports that can be accessed by selecting Country Reports from the Reports tab. There are also country studies that report statistics about the chosen country.

Country Profiles on the Web

A-Z List of Country and Other Area Pages (State Dept.)
This website maintained by the US Department of State includes country facts about governments, political conditions, economy, and foreign relations.
CIA World Factbook
US government profiles of countries and territories around the world.
Countries (World Bank)
The World Bank provides free and open access to a comprehensive set of statistical data about development in countries around the globe.
Corruption Perception Index by Country
Country reports focusing on corruption and corruption rate.

Statistics Portals

UN Statistics Division
Home page of the United Nations Statistics Division, which provides access to economic indicators, demographic and social statistics, through the UN databases.
International Statistics Database
Produced by the St. Louis Federal Reserve, this database provides a way to look for worldwide economic indicators.
UNESCO Institute for Statistics
The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the primary source for cross-nationally comparable statistics on education, science and technology, culture, and communication for more than 200 countries and territories.
US Census Bureau International Data Base
World population statistics back to 1950
World Bank Data and Statistics
The World Bank Data includes world statistics and the World Development Indicators (WDI) that provide cultural, demographic, economic, environmental and health data for over 200 countries.
World Health Organization Countries
UNData
This website pulls out information from various UN statistical databases. You can pull out information from databases individually, or search by country.
Eurostat
Statistical portal for EU countries. Data are collected from the National Statistics Institute, the enlarged European Union, candidate countries, and the EFTA.
FAO Statistical Yearbook
Yearbooks profiling food and agriculture in 155 countries dating back to 2004.
IMF World Economic Outlook Database
The World Economic Outlook (WEO) database contains selected macroeconomic data series from the statistical appendix of the IMF World Economic Outlook report.
International Labour Organization (ILO) Statistics
Statistical Sites on the World Wide Web
Links to official statistical offices all over the world.
Global Consumption Database
Data on household consumption patterns in developing countries. Select data by country and sector.

FRED Economic Data
FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) Is an online database consisting of thousands of economic data time series from scores of national, internationall, public and private sources.
To learn how to use the database, find and download data, you can browse the Getting to know FRED Guide