Another great way to visualize data

A fascinating paper by Anthony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez in the Journal of Economic Literature, condensed and interpreted by Uwe E. Reinhardt @ the NYT Economix:

its a good exercise to figure out why median and mean income diverged so dramatically while per capital GDP kept growing. The answer is on Reinhardt's blog, and its depressing.

The hope for a quick recovery are muted. State revenues are recovered strongly - but only in some states. Slow revenue growth foreshadowed the recent downgrade in GDP... Policy makers celebrated the end of the contraction, but the absence of a recovery that returns us back to trend growth is worrysome. 

Trade Map

Market Access Map

Investment Map

Trade Competitiveness Map

Standards Map

Market analysis tools

Product Map

Trade Statistics

Market development

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/state/data/

The US trade pattern in two pictures, curtesy of the WSJ

Why rely on Purchasing Power Parity adjusted GDP to assess development. Here are much more convicing measures:

Light

  Locations of Friends

  Air Traffice

The Bank of International Settlements reports that the DAILY foreign exchange volume has just about cracked the $4 trillion mark. Up from $3.3 trillion in 2007. To get an idea of the unbelievable scale of these flows, the DAILY turnover is thus larger than the total ANNUAL income of any European economy (for example, FX turnover is twice the size of the UK's ANNUAL income) and DAILY FX flows are about 1/3 of the ANNUAL income in the US. Or, to ballpark it, ANNUAL FX flows are about 70 times larger than ANNUAL US GDP...

Interestingly, the dollar maintains its status as the worlds reserve currency, despite the subprime crisis, despite quantitative easing (rounds I and II), despite record fiscal deficits, and despite the zero interest rates policy of the Fed.   

 A comparison of real time yields for European Country Debt is now available from Bloomberg. Calculated Risk has the instructions:

A fantastic, dynamic graph of the Fed's Balance Sheet, by credit facility

Joe Stiglitz says it all in a nutshell: The Federal Reserve Board is no longer the lender of last resort, but the lender of first resort. Credit risk in the mortgage market is being assumed by the government, and market risk by the Fed. No one should be surprised at what has now happened: the private market has essentially disappeared.  

Including Central Bank Reserves can be found at the Center for Financial Stability.

Hans Rosling believes that making information more visually accessible has the potential to change the quality of the information itself. His website Gapminder allows data to be displayed to experience development in motion. He also has a great TED talk. Here is one of his pictures:

A historical treasure trove (mostly US/UK data, some Chinese/Japanese data

• • Annualized Growth Rates
  • Relative Values - US $
  • Relative Values - UK £
  • Relative Values - China 
  • Relative Values - Japan ¥
  • Conversion ($ and £)
  • Purchasing Power - US $
  • Purchasing Power - UK £
  • Savings Growth - US $
  • Inflation Rates
  • Stock Growth Rates (DJIA, SP500, & NASDAQ)
• GRAPHS
• DATA SETS
  • GDP - US
  • GDP - UK
  • CPI - US
  • Wage - US
  • RPI & Earnings- UK
  • Consumer Bundle - US
  • GDP, & Prices- China
  • GDP, Prices, & Wages - Japan
  • SAP - US
  • Daily DJA
  • Price of Gold
  • Interest Rates - US & UK
  • Dollar Exchange Rates
  • Dollar-Pound Exchange Rate

Data Sets and visualization tools (check out the data visualizer and interactive maps)

Debt Sustainability Model Plus 

WorldDevelopment Indicators

GlobalDevelopment Finance

AfricanDevelopment Indicators

MillenniumDevelopment Indicators

GlobalEconomic Monitor (GEM)

ActionableGovernance Indicators

BulletinBoard on Statistical Capacity (BBSC)

DoingBusiness Database

EducationStatistics

Enterprise Surveys

GenderStatistics

HealthNutrition and Population Statistics

InternationalComparison Program

JointExternal Debt Hub (JEDH)

LogisticsPerformance Index (LPI)

PrivateParticipation in Infrastructure (PPI) database 

QuarterlyExternal Debt Statistics (QEDS/SDDS)

QuarterlyExternal Debt Statistics (QEDS/GDDS)

WorldwideGovernance Indicators (WGI)

Climate Data 

Environment Data

Rural and Urban Development Datasets

Country Environmental Factsheets

Little Green Data Book

World Development Indicators

Indicator 

The Bank for International Settlements maintains a rich time series on real effective exchange rates; The Bundesbank keeps wonderful historical data. Interestingly, Econbrowser uses the data to show that the appreciation of the dollar against the euro is much less pronounced when we look at the broadest exchange rate measure. The answer is of course China holding its exchange rate with the US fixed. 

 Despite the euro's depreciation, the dollar has exhibited much less movement on a real, trade-weighted, basis.

Real Effective Exchange Rates 

Figure 2: Log broad trade weighted real USD (blue bold), CNY (red) and EUR (green). Source: BIS and author's calculations. 

Maps - QED, and historical data

NetMap Combined Studies - QEDractive world map

Globalis - an interactive world map

Comparative Advantage over time