Latest release – v2026_09 New
Global Macro Database
The world's most comprehensive macroeconomic dataset.
46 variables · 239 countries · 167 sources · 1086–2025 (+ forecasts to 2031)
The 2026-09 update is a data-quality release. It fixes hundreds of errors in exchange rates, currency units and government deficits, and adds seven new sources, including historical estimates that take nominal GDP for Spain, Italy and Portugal back to 1277, 1310 and 1527. AI agents can now query the GMD via MCP, and new packages load it in MATLAB and Julia. Check the full release log here.
Trusted by 8,000+ researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. Free for academic use.
More history, more data, one consistent series
Long history, not just for rich countries
127 countries have data on exports from before 1950, as just one example.
First year of export data
- Before 1800 6 countries
- 1800–1869 62 countries
- 1870–1949 59 countries
- 1950 or later 100 countries
- No data
More data than any single source
Country-years of data up to 2025. For a typical variable the GMD has 1.7 times as many as the leading single source.
One series from many sources
France's nominal GDP is covered by 23 sources, each for part of the period (bars). The GMD joins them into one continuous series (line) by matching growth rates.
The one-stop shop for cross-country macroeconomic data
Macroeconomic statistics are essential for researchers and practitioners. Yet the underlying data are scattered across hundreds of sources, with inconsistent units, country and time coverage, and variable definitions. The result: users spend weeks understanding, cleaning, harmonizing, and combining data before they can do any analysis.
The Global Macro Database (GMD) was built to remove that bottleneck. Our key innovation is to integrate a total of 167 data sources, both historical and current, updated quarterly through a large, systematic pipeline that divides up the process of downloading, cleaning, and combining data. For more on the project's motivation and methodology, see our paper (Müller, Xu, Lehbib, and Chen, 2025) and the technical documentation.
Free for academic use
The Global Macro Database (GMD) is free for academic use: research meant for publication, teaching, and theses by students, faculty, and researchers at universities and academic research institutes. It is also free for teachers and non-profit organizations. If you use it, please cite the dataset (see How to cite).
Everyone else, including companies, may not use it without our written permission. For commercial use, our partners at Anansi Data Analytics offer the World Economic Database, a more extensive, commercial-grade product. If you are unsure whether your use is free, get in touch before downloading.