On the Web:

Country & Industry Market Reports  Must be a registered export.gov user to view these; provides access to the U.S. Commercial Service Market Research Library containing more than 100,000 industry and country-specific market reports, web sites, events, and trade directory listings. Registration is free.

Foreign Trade Highlights  From the Department of Commerce, data on U.S. international trade in goods and services.  Includes U.S. commodity trade by world and region and top U.S. trading partners from 1996 to the present.

Global Financial Data  Long-term historical indices on stock markets, interest rates, exchange rates and inflation rates. Stock markets back to 1690, exchange rates back to 1590, interest rates back to 1700, inflation rates back to 1264. Data available on more than 80 countries. View some files free; pay to order others, especially the historical data.

International Monetary Fund  Statistical and background information on how the Fund works; current news; links to recent IMF publications.

MAC: Market Access and Compliance  Market Access and Compliance (MAC On-Line), formerly the Global Export Market Information System (GEMS), provides a full range of information on accessing foreign markets.  Its stated mission is "to obtain market access for American firms and workers and to achieve full compliance by foreign nations with trade agreements they sign with our country."  Includes market information on Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the newly independent states, China, NAFTA, and the EURO Web site.

OANDA Currency Converter  Exchange rate on any day from January 1, 1990 to the present by selecting the countries of interest.

U.S. Trade Agreements Database  Agreements currently in force between the United States and its trading partners that cover manufactured products and services.

World Bank Group  News, publications, topics in development, doing business with the bank, world development indicators. Includes a Competitive Indicators database that may be searched by country or by all indicators and country ranking.

Europa World Yearbook 
International and United Nations statistics, country profiles.

Globalizing Capital: a History of the International Monetary System
History of the development of the international monetary system over the last 150 years. Focuses on the growing politicizing of economic policy and the globalization of capital while arguing that the ambitions for exchange rate stability are likely to be frustrated and floating rates will prevail.

IMF Survey (International Monetary Fund)
Semi–monthly newsletter containing information on IMF activities, economic news, and reports on financial trends and world economies.

World Factbook (published by the CIA)
Especially good for per capita income, inflation rate, and unemployment rates for each country.

Go to the Library catalog

• Business & Company Resource Center
  Search for news and articles on international businesses and international industry data. An extensive business, company and industry database with news, articles, financial documents, rankings, company histories, industry reports, and more. Searchable by company, industry, or article keyword.
   
• Infotrac OneFile
  Search for articles on international business in this large periodicals database featuring the full text and citations for newspaper and magazine articles. Includes many international publications that focus on business.
   
• Newsbank
  Search for full text newspaper articles on international business. Consists of two databases: America’s Newspapers, which indexes the full text of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Orange County Register, San Diego Union-Tribune, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle from roughly 1985 to the present; and Noticias en Español, which provides full text articles in Spanish.

Search tips: The broad search term "international finance" should yield many hits in these databases. Narrow your search by using a specific country as your subject and selecting one of the subtopics listed under it. For example, you might use "Russia" as the subject to search, then consult the subtopics "finance," "economic aspects," or "economic policy." 

Go to the Library's databases