This guide was prepared by the Management & Economics Librarian for students taking COMM 4701. These resources have been selected as excellent starting points for locating and retrieving information on a foreign market. For further research assistance, please contact Dr. Joyline Makani
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Country Reports
From the EIU, nearly 200 countries reports examining the political scene, economic policy, domestic economy, sectoral trends, and foreign trade and payments, including detailed two-year forecasts.. Use the"blue" site to gain access to both the regular report and recently published updates to the forecasts
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Country Commerce
From the EIU, provides information on how to do business in 55 countries covering specific operating conditions, commercial laws and business regulations.
MarketLine Advantage: Country Profiles
Comprehensive country profiles of about 215 countries world-wide.
Mergent online Country Profiles
Access to the Mergent Country profiles is located on the right hand bottom corner of the Mergent database. Included in the profiles are country statistical indicators covering people, communication, trade, stock market and military.
From the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, provides country surveys covering economic, geographic, and political conditions.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD): FDI reports
Contains extensive data on FDI flows and stocks activities of TNCs, the legal framework within each country/economy, including legislation relating to bilateral treaties that govern national investment policy.
CANSIM (public site)
Provides access to current and historical data series collected in a wide variety of subjects by Statistics Canada and other governmental agencies.
Statistics Canada: Census Program
Provides a statistical portrait of the country every five years. The 2016 Census Program includes the Census of Population and the Census of Agriculture.
Population projections for Canada, provinces and territories
Population Projections for Canada (2013 to 2063), Provinces and Territories (2013 to 2038)
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Data Tool
From the Data menu click on the Data Tool and select All Viewswire in Step 1.
Click on Databases, then Country Statistics to conduct quick and easy comparative analysis of macroeconomic and industry drivers for over 200 countries. Features comprehensive data and forecasts including detailed coverage of consumer demographics, incomes, and expenditures.
MarketLine Advantage: Market Data Analytics
Click on Databases, then Market Data Analytics to access comprehensive data across global food, drinks personal care household products, pet care, news and magazine and tobacco markets.
MarketLine Advantage: City Statistics
Click on Databases, then City Statistics to access and compare the world’s most important cities data. Features comprehensive data and forecasts of key socio and macroeconomic indicators for more than 1950 cities, spread across Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa, North America, and South & Central America.
Provides access to the World Development Indicators (WDI), Global Development Finance (GDF), Africa Development Indicators (ADI), Education Statistics (EdStats), Gender Statistics (GenderStats), Health Nutrition & Population Statistics (HNP) and Global Economic Monitor (GEM) databases.
International Financial Statistics (IMF)
Contains approximately 32,000 time series covering more than 200 countries and areas.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD): FDI reports
Contains extensive data on FDI flows and stocks activities of TNCs, the legal framework within each country/economy, including legislation relating to bilateral treaties that govern national investment policy.
UNData (a data access system to UN databases)
Access to over 60 million data points covering a wide range of themes including Agriculture, Crime, Education, Employment, Energy, Environment, Health, HIV/AIDS, Human Development, Industry, Information & Communication Technology, National Accounts, Population, Refugees, Tourism, Trade, as well as the Millennium Development Goals indicators.
An International Labour Office database on labour statistics operated by the ILO Bureau of Statistics, provides data and metadata for over 200 countries or territories.
Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union situated in Luxembourg. Its task is to provide the European Union with statistics at European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions.
Human Development Report (HDR) (UNDP)
Presents a wealth of statistical information on different aspects of human development.
The China General Social Survey (China GSS)
An annual or biannual survey of China's urban and rural households designed to gather longitudinal data on social trends and the changing relationship between social structure and quality of life in China.
Combines the power of the Google Chart API with publicly available datasets from organizations like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, the U.S. Census Bureau, and Statistics Canada.
When searching for articles in databases take some time to consider the best keywords for your topic in order to retrieve the best results, e.g. China (location) AND ("foreign investment" OR "foreign trade"). Also consider alternate spellings: e.g. labour(Canadian spelling) and labor(US).
Perform a search using the following search string: topic* and wc># and atleast# country name, (e.g., "health care" and wc>200 and atleast5 Canada). You can expand and restrict your search results by changing the different word counts (wc>#) or mentions of the country name (atleast#).