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New at Economics?

It is true that sometimes economics does sound complicated and don't get me wrong, it can get really messy. Nevertheless, understanding it as a mechanical system with different kind of cycles caused by a different number of factors is key. The video below provides a complete, intuitive overview of what this is all about (by Ray Dalio, avaiable on YouTube). If you are looking to clarify a specific term or development, give it a try in the search bar of Our World in Data

For Starters & Students

If you are interested in economics or if you are studying it currently, all scientific production about it is normally conceived in the following order: premisses, models, empirical evidence and conclusion. The implication of this is that data is a central element in a paper about any economic theme, because it is basically the empirical evidence that suggets how well your model is performing. Wether for a presentation, simulation or thesis, the following websites provide a wide range of data that you can use:

Website Data Usage Region
Federal Reserve Economic Data Time series data of different economic indicators for the USA and the rest of the world. Very good source for computing statistics, plotting graphs and importing tables to compare different countries. The whole world
U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics Labour statistics of the United States based on surveys and census data. Interesting data on labour force, employment and earnings. Also a good source for labour-related studies, such as the effectiveness of minimum wages or the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the American labour market. United States of America (USA)
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Vast variety of topics, ranging from agriculture, energy and development to finance, government and economy. The graphs and statistics cover all sort of issues and are quite intuitive and easy to read. Surely a good source for presentations and papers that aim to illustrate an economic development. OECD countries, see list here
Our World in Data An excellent website to get a quick overview of a problematic (not limited only to economics) and visualize it. It is not only raw data or graphs: Authors write a brief article on an issue and illustrates graphically. The graphs can be used to support an argument either in a paper or during a presentation. The whole world
World Bank Open Data Data of different economic indicators of different formats. Good source for computing statistics, plotting graphs and importing tables to compare different countries. The whole world
Federal Statistical Office Data for different sectors of the Swiss economy and statistics of different economic indicators and labour market. Good if you are looking for graphs or importing tables. Switzerland
Swiss National Bank Time series data of different indicators for Switzerland. Normally the source of the Federal Statistical Office. The best website to collect data for statistics and graph plotting for Switzerland (see example R). Switzerland
Open Data Swiss Government Swiss open data. Divided in many categories, you can access diverse kind of datasets using APIs. For more API sources, visit Github Public APIs. Switzerland

To find the latest papers and articles on economics, visit the National Bureau of Economic Research website.

Programming: importing, analysing and visualizing data using R

R is a poweful tool for data analysis. It is open-source and easy to use, especially if you already know a programming language. In theory you could find all the features to analyse data in Python libraries, though I encourage to use R because it compiles faster and it saves variables to a global environment in your computer, which makes your analysis and testing easier. To start using R dwonload R and R Studio. It is possible to learn all details of R reading R for Data Science, however, in order to fully dominate the programming language and use it in your routine to spare time, you should definetively have a "learning by doing" approach. For this reason, the table below contains some examples of R scripts that I created or used for academic projects/work that I made avaiable for you to download and "play around":

Template Description
Introduction to statistical simulations This template is a good start for those who intend to run statistics based on well defined, controlled experiment framework, either to test a model. It shows the basics in sampling and using for loops to run statistical experiments.
Full data pipeline example: from importing to visualisation If you are just trying to get data from the web in order to run statistical analysis and plot some graphs, this template here is definetively going to save you a lot of time. It refers to a paper that I had to write about the Phillips Curve theory in general and wether the theory would hold if one would take Switzerland as an example. Therefore I imported all inflation data of Switzerland in xlsx format, cleaned the data for regressions and finished the analysis plotting Phillips curves (using different data inputs).