A New Database of Global Economic Indicators

The Database of Global Economic Indicators (DGEI) from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas aims to standardize and disseminate economic indicators for policy analysis and scholarly work on the role of globalization. Its main purpose is to offer a broad perspective on a number of global factors affecting the U.S. economy. DGEI indicators are based on a core sample of 40 countries with aggregates for the rest of the world (ex. the U.S.) and by level of development attainment and openness to trade. DGEI indicators currently include real GDP, industrial production (IP), Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), merchandise exports and imports, headline CPI, core CPI (ex. food and energy), PPI/WPI inflation, nominal and real exchange rates, and short-term interest rates. Here we describe our methodology to transform and combine different time series, for temporal and cross-country aggregation, and to highlight the importance of using representative data in international macroeconomics research. Our paper makes a related contribution to the literature by providing a formal assessment of conventional interpolation methods used to adjust the data frequency. A selection of the DGEI-derived global indicators – to be updated monthly – can be accessed at the following URL: http://www.dallasfed.org/institute/dgei/index.cfm.