The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) -- basically an international forum comprising 30 industrialized nations -- has, for about 40 years, "been one of the world's largest and most reliable sources of comparable statistics and economic and social data." Because it exchanges information with more than 100 other countries, the information available here goes well beyond the borders of its membership.
Given that the current economic crisis is global in nature, it's useful to know about sources of economic data and analysis, which brings us to OECD's Economics Department. The main page features a "What's New" section that shows you its latest reports and analysis. Not everything here is free; some materials are available for purchase or can be accessed only by subscribers. But there are usually associated executive summaries or policy briefs -- such as this one, from a 2009 Economic Survey of France (PDF; 307 KB) -- that are available to everyone. You can keep up with the newest offerings via an RSS feed.
Click on the Statistics link on the light blue navigation bar near the top to see statistical reports and analyses; they are in reverse chronological order so the newest ones are at the top. Some are PDFs, some are .xls spreadsheets. Everything I looked at here was free to everyone, including usual data such as these Indicators of regulation in energy, transport and communications.
The Publication & Documents link takes you to a long menu of items that are available here, including:
If you're interested in information for a specific nation, it's best to use the Information by Country link. You can browse alphabetically here, or use the link at the top to get to a directory of OECD's new Country Websites. What's nice here is that the same light blue navigation bar is at the top of each site for the member countries, the "Accession candidate countries," (Chile, Estonia, Israel, Russia, Slovenia) and the "Enhanced engagement countries" (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa).
In case you're wondering about "Accession candidate countries" and "Enhanced engagement countries," OECD's Members and Partners page explains:
In May 2007, OECD countries agreed to invite Chile, Estonia, Israel, Russia and Slovenia to open discussions for membership of the Organisation and offered enhanced engagement, with a view to possible membership, to Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa. The approval of so-called "road maps" in last December marks the start of accession talks with Chile, Estonia, Israel, Russia and Slovenia.
In contrast to many other international organisations, becoming a member of OECD is not something that is automatically open to applicant countries. The member countries of the Organisation, meeting in its governing body (the Council), decide whether a country should be invited to join OECD and on what conditions. This decision is taken at the end of what might be called the accession process.
We'd be remiss here if we didn't also remind you about one of our favorite sources of international business information -- and that would be the amazing globalEDGE International Business Resource Desk, via Michigan State University.
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