Research Guides: International Entrepreneurship: Home

Welcome

For basic information about the economy, geography, government, etc. about a specific country, use the sources on this page. Use the other pages to access more specific types of information.

Be sure to pay attention to the dates associated with any data. Not all countries collect the same data, and those that do don't all collect it at the same frequency.

Sources for Country Reports

globalEdge
Best place to start! Follow links to original sources and remember that you need to be able to trust the source. Great comparison tools to measure one country against another in specific areas.
Global Competitiveness Report 2020
Measures countries on how well they're doing economically and has analysis on the overall ability to grow business. Search the index for your country.
Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index
Access to a survey of business people on how corrupt their government systems are. This could include the courts, inspectors, and regulators as well as politicians. A corrupt system increases business risk greatly.
World Economic Outlook Database
International Monetary Fund data on many countries. Includes several different ways of measuring GDP, and includes trade, unemployment and government finance. Allows data from several countries to be downloaded at the same time.
Human Development Reports
UN's collection of statistics on education, human rights, fertility. environmental controls, life expectancy, etc. Include these statistics in discussions of culture as well as economics.
UN Country Profiles
CIA World Fact Book
Basic data on geography, political system, demographics, etc.
US Dept. of Commerce Country Commercial Guides
These guides are created to increase US businesses' ability to sell abroad. Great updated resource now that the World Bank's Doing Business site is legacy and not kept current.
World Bank
This is a direct link to their data page. Download the file at the right on each country page to see all the data they have.
IMF DataMapper
Allows you to customize lots of data, primarily of government funds and country-level economic information.

Statista This link opens in a new window
Open "Reports" and select Country & Region Reports.
It's also possible to find industry statistics for many countries such as "non-alcoholic beverages" AND China.
ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new window
Search for your country and then on the right click on More Options under Narrow Results by. Include Reports to see Business Monitor reports on economic sectors such as agribusiness or insurance.
Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Search for your country and then on the left under Source Types, click on Show More. Choose Country Reports to find reports from Political Risk Yearbook and Datamonitor.
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) iLibrary This link opens in a new window
OECD iLibrary is the online library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) featuring its books, papers and statistics and is the gateway to OECD's analysis and data. OECD iLibrary also contains content published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), the OECD Development Centre, PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), and the International Transport Forum (ITF). Every year around 300 new titles are published via OECD iLibrary associated with the following themes: Agriculture & Food; Development; Economics; Education; Employment; Energy; Environment; Finance and Investment; Governance; Industry and Services; Nuclear Energy; Science and Technology; Social Issues / Migration / Health ; Taxation; Trade; Transport; Urban, Rural and Regional Development.

NOTE: Rider University is NOT a subscriber to this database BUT all book and journal content is *available to all users to READ FREE online by clicking the READ icon (eye icon)*. All users can access *and download* select materials such as the OECD Factbook, OECD Working Papers, Indicators, and more.

Statista also has country reports:

A. T. Kearney 2021 Global Services Location Index
The Global Services Location Index (GSLI) has identified three major evolutions in service-delivery models over the past 30 years. In the first of these, the 1990s and early 2000s saw an offshoring wave in which multinationals engaged in geographic arbitrage to identify low-cost production centers. The second major phase took place from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, as the model shifted toward outsourcing and the spin-off of non-core operations. Then, within the past decade, a third model has centered on “no-shoring” and the automation of high-volume, repetitive activities.

NationMaster
A collection of interesting statistics that are grouped by country or by topic. Use the bar at the top to browse for information by country.
Int'l Model UN Country Profiles
U.S. Dept. of State Country Information
GLOBE Project Cultural Analysis