The Global Macro Database

Link to paper 📄

This repository complements our paper, Müller, Xu, Lehbib, and Chen (2025), which introduces a panel dataset of 46 macroeconomic variables across 243 countries from historical records beginning in the year 1086 until 2024, including projections through the year 2030.

Features

• Unparalleled Coverage: Combines data from 32 contemporary sources (e.g., IMF, World Bank, OECD) and 86 historical datasets, totaling 118 sources.
• Extensive Variables: Covers national accounts, consumption, investment, trade, prices, government finances, interest rates, employment, and financial crises.
• Transparent Source Prioritization: Prioritizes country-specific sources over international aggregators to ensure both historical depth and accuracy.
• Harmonized Data: All data is cleaned, spliced, and chainlinked for consistent cross-country comparison.
• Comprehensive Metadata: Variable definitions follow SNA 2008 standards and are documented in the technical appendix.
• Frequent Updates: Quarterly releases with version control and changelogs.
• Open Access & Tools: Access data via web, Python, R, or Stata packages. All processing code is open source.

Data Access

Download via Website

Stata package:

ssc install gmd
gmd rGDP, country(FRA)

Python package:

pip install global_macro_data

from global_macro_data import gmd
df = gmd(version="2025_06", country=["USA", "CHN"], variables=["rGDP", "CPI"])

R package:

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("KMueller-Lab/Global-Macro-Database-R")
library(globalmacrodata)
df <- gmd(version = "2025_06", country = c("USA", "CHN"), variables = c("rGDP", "CPI"))

Release Schedule

Release Date	Version	Details
2025-01-30	2025_01	Initial release
2025-04-01	2025_03	Legacy Version
2025-07-01	2025_06	Current Version
2025-10-01	2025_09	Planned
2026-01-01	2025_12	Planned

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Release Note (2025_06)

Overview

Released June 30, 2025. This update brings improved inflation series, methodological refinements in government finance construction, six new historical sources, and enhanced priority logic across core variables.

Key Changes

Inflation Data Patch

• Fixed issues caused by breaks in CPI series.
• Revised source priority list to incorporate new sources.

New Sources and Coverage

• Integrated six new datasets: RR_infl, Clio, UN_trade, BEL_1, CAN_2, and KOR_2.
• Revised source hierarchy for nGDP, cons, inv, finv, imports, and exports.

Government Finance Methodology

• Fiscal series (govdebt, govdef, govexp, govrev, govtax) are now derived from GDP ratios.
• Applied chainlinking to back out consistent level series.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Enhanced the robustness of the cleaning pipeline.
• Addressed inconsistencies across a few long-run sources.

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Citation

Please cite the dataset as:

@techreport{GMD2025,
  title = {The Global Macro Database: A New International Macroeconomic Dataset},
  author = {M{"u}ller, Karsten and Xu, Chenzi and Lehbib, Mohamed and Chen, Ziliang},
  institution = {National Bureau of Economic Research},
  type = {Working Paper},
  series = {Working Paper Series},
  number = {33714},
  year = {2025},
  month = {April},
  doi = {10.3386/w33714},
  URL = {http://www.nber.org/papers/w33714},
}

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Acknowledgments

The development of the Global Macro Database would not have been possible without the generous funding provided by the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) through the PYP grants (WBS A-0003319-01-00 and A-0003319-02-00), a Tier 1 grant (A-8001749- 00-00), and the NUS Risk Management Institute (A-8002360-00-00). This financial support laid the foundation for the successful completion of this extensive project.