Financial Openness and Growth in 213 Countries: A Finance and Growth Panel Dataset

In this paper, we provide information on an extended and improved version to the economic growth dataset as initially constructed by Eschenbach, Francois, and Nitzsche (2003). We give detailed information on the variables included in the Finance and Growth Panel dataset (FGPD) and on the respective data sources. This new dataset contains over 230 variables and covers 213 countries for the period 1970-2007. The main building blocks of the database are variables on economic growth and related macroeconomic performance, quality of institutions, and financial (openness) indicators. NOTE the *.zip archive includes the database in Excel format, and the background paper describing the data set.