Global Macro Database
A public macroeconomic data product that packages long-run international data, quarterly releases, documentation, and research-ready access into one workflow.
Global Macro Database reads less like a personal tool and more like a public data product. The live site leads with a clear promise: the world's most comprehensive macroeconomic dataset, distributed through data files, packages, documentation, GitHub, and an academic paper.
The article therefore needs a data-product structure: release signal, coverage metrics, source pipeline, access modes, and citation requirements.
Data, Code, and Citation
The public website and repository contain the latest data, documentation, packages, release notes, source code, and citation guidance.
The Release Page Is the Interface
GMD is not a static spreadsheet. The live site frames it around a current release, update notes, download paths, paper, documentation, and GitHub.
The update adds eleven new data sources, two new consumption variables, improved government finance ratio splicing, and feature parity across the Python, R, and Stata packages.
A Pipeline for Removing Data Friction
The project exists because macro data is scattered, inconsistent, and expensive to harmonize before analysis can even begin.
The live site describes the bottleneck plainly: users can spend weeks cleaning, harmonizing, and combining data before doing analysis. GMD moves that work into a systematic pipeline for downloading, cleaning, combining, documenting, and releasing data.
IMF, World Bank, OECD, UN, BIS, and other contemporary sources give modern coverage.
Yearbooks, archives, handbooks, and academic datasets extend selected series far back in time.
Definitions, source ranking, splicing, and metadata turn source fragments into usable series.
Research-Ready Access Paths
A dataset becomes infrastructure when it fits the tools researchers already use.
CSV, Excel, and Stata files support direct inspection, teaching, replication, and offline workflows.
Python, R, and Stata packages let researchers pull GMD into analysis pipelines without manual download steps.
Technical documentation explains variables, sources, construction choices, and limitations.
The live site presents the data as free for non-commercial use under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, with citation required.
Citation Is Part of the Product
Because GMD updates quarterly, the site asks users to cite the exact version they used.
This matters for reproducibility. If a dataset changes over time, a paper or report should point to the version that generated the results, not just the project name.
@techreport{GMD2025,
title = {The Global Macro Database: A New International Macroeconomic Dataset (Version 2026-03)},
author = {Müller, Karsten and Xu, Chenzi and Lehbib, Mohamed and Chen, Ziliang},
institution = {National Bureau of Economic Research},
number = {33714},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.3386/w33714}
}GMD is one of the most systematic projects I have participated in: a way to make macroeconomic history easier to study, compare, teach, and replicate.