World Development Indicators (2003 Edition) on econ.bc.edu
Graduate Statistical Assistant Program, FMRC
The econ.bc.edu interface to The World Bank's
World Development Indicators
(2003 edition) allows you to select the series you want to retrieve, for specified
time periods, via a web browser. You need not use SQL nor have a special computer account
to use this interface. The data are either displayed in your browser or, more usefully,
downloaded as a text file to your desktop system. A Stata
program is provided that will transform the data to a more usable format. However, use of these
data in any other package or spreadsheet is equally feasible, since the data are in text form.
This dataset contains up to
575 annual "indicators," or variables, for 208
countries and 18 groupings
of countries over the 42 years 1960-2001.
These data also may be directly accessed as a single Stata dataset.
To use the database interface, you choose:
- the categories of series from which series are to be chosen,
- the specific series to be retrieved from those categories,
- the countries and/or groups of countries for which data are desired,
- and the first and last years.
After making these selections, you are given a summary of your retrieval request (which you should
print for further reference), and offered the choice to either Display Data or Download Data.
If you Display the data, it will appear in an HTML table in the web browser. Data in an HTML table are not
machine-readable; this option is provided only for convenience. To work with the data, use the Download option.
Note well the warning that if you retrieve more than one file to your desktop, the files must be renamed
to prevent corruption. These text files can be accessed by any text editor, word processor or spreadsheet.
A Stata do-file, wdidata.do, is also provided to reformat (reshape) the data from the downloaded form to a
panel format.
You are urged to retrieve a reasonable number of series and time periods.
Last updated: 31 October 2003 by baum