Every claim about how a country's finance system works ultimately rests on data — and every data point comes from somewhere specific. This pillar introduces the major international organizations that publish global financial data, explains what each one is best at, and lets you compare countries directly using their live data.
International financial data is published by a handful of organizations, each with a distinct mandate and complementary strengths. Knowing who publishes what — and why — is part of financial literacy. Each provider below has its own focus, methodology, and public data portal.
The World Bank Group's data arm publishes the most widely-used cross-country dataset in development finance: the World Development Indicators (WDI). Nearly 1,500 series spanning 200+ economies and 60+ years, covering everything from GDP to financial inclusion to climate finance. Free, open, no authentication.
The IMF publishes the World Economic Outlook (WEO) twice a year with five-year forward projections for every member country, plus the International Financial Statistics (IFS), Balance of Payments, Government Finance Statistics, and Financial Soundness Indicators. The DataMapper API exposes the WEO series free of charge.
The OECD focuses on its 38 member countries — mostly high-income economies — with deeply detailed statistics on household balance sheets, pension funds, education finance, taxation, and labor markets. Less universal coverage than the World Bank, but far more granular on advanced-economy structure.
"The central bank for central banks." BIS publishes data on international banking flows, cross-border claims, credit-to-GDP gaps (a key early-warning indicator for financial crises), residential property prices, foreign exchange turnover, and debt securities markets — most of it produced collaboratively with national central banks.
UNCTAD publishes the World Investment Report annually and maintains UNCTADstat — covering foreign direct investment (FDI), merchandise trade, services trade, commodity prices, maritime transport, and digital economy indicators. Particular strength in tracking emerging-market and developing-economy participation in global flows.
Eurostat is the official statistical authority for the EU, producing harmonized data across all 27 member states plus EFTA countries. Particularly relevant for the Paris class anchor: harmonized inflation (HICP), sovereign debt under the Maastricht criteria, sectoral accounts, and balance of payments comparable across all eurozone economies.
Instead of browsing every indicator across every country, see six economies (US, France, Japan, Brazil, Kenya, India by default) compared on the six measures that actually characterize how a country has organized its financial system — credit allocation, capital markets depth, sovereign finance, and more. Swap countries to compare any region.
Twelve curated indicators that map to the lesson curriculum. Data fetched live from the World Bank Indicators API directly in your browser — nothing is stored on Globefin's servers. Every chart links back to the original series so you can verify, dig deeper, or download the underlying data.
A note on missing values. Not every country reports every indicator every year. Gaps in the data reflect what the country reported to the World Bank, not a Globefin omission. When a country shows no data for the requested years, the World Bank simply has no observations to return — you can verify on the World Bank's own portal via the source link above each chart.
The Data pillar will expand: IMF DataMapper widgets for macro forecasts, OECD comparators for advanced-economy structure, BIS credit-cycle indicators, Eurostat eurozone harmonized series. If there's a specific comparison you'd find useful for teaching or learning, let us know.
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