Library Journal / September 15, 2003
Database & Disc Reviews

GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT FINANCE (GDF) ONLINE
World Bank Group
202-473-5149
pubrights@worldbank.org
publications.worldbank.org/GDF
Date reviewed: 07/25/03
Price: Based on population served (FTE for university libraries; population served for public and special libraries; discounts are available for developing-country residents).

The Global Development Finance (GDF) Online database is the electronic version of the World Bank's statistical directory of developmental country finance (before 1997 it was available for many years as World Debt Tables). It makes available a wealth of historical as well as current data on the debt and financial flows for 138 countries.

The change in title marks a shift in the number of these investments that are made. The typical source of funding today is Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), a more important source of finance for developing countries than private lending. These are the sorts of trends that can be tracked from the data in this database. So the focus here is on country investment data as well as the credit valuation of a country, necessary to assess investment prospects.

Full commentary and tables from the annual yearbook are not available in this database but are available for the current and last year at the World Bank web site. Consequently, those needing to archive the commentary should be careful about eliminating the print subscription in case these archives are not perpetuated at the web site. These commentaries review the key issues in world development economics as seen from the World Bank for that year. Some of the preformatted information available from the current yearbook is available by clicking on “GDF Tables” in the GDF Online database.

Searching the database is fairly straightforward. There are tabs to select countries, data series, or years. After picking a tab, users select the items they are interested in and add them to their search. The Date tab offers the potential to go from 1970 to 2011. Many data items go back to 1970, but not all do.

The “Select countries” tab allows researchers to select countries in several different ways, including a “Tree View” (a hierarchical view) and an “Alphabetical View.” In the tree view the headings group countries by “Region,” “Income” (low, middle, and high), and “Indebtedness” (from severely indebted to less indebted). The inclusion of income and debt is highly useful for researchers in this area.

The “Select series” tab covers the various series available, and again, searchers are offered “Tree” and “Alphabetical” views. “Tree view” offers several lead headings. “Summary Totals” includes debt and investment low totals. “Indicators” includes Debt Indicators, Macroeconomic Aggregates, Currency Composition, and Average terms on new commitments, as well as other headings highlighting various types of debt and creditors. The “Alphabetic view” offers all the series items available in alphabetical order.

I often found “Tree View” most useful in the “Select countries” tab and “Alphabetical view” most useful in the “Select series” tab. In “Series,” “Alphabetic view” was more useful because the gradations in headings in the hierarchical “tree” are hard to discern; I feel more comfortable reviewing the series in a list to make sure I don't miss anything. Also, “Alphabetical view” offers a “FIND” box that can help in locating series where your term is not the first term in the series name. The “Tree View” is more useful in the “Select countries” tab because these groupings are readily discernible and useful in selecting countries for this type of research.

For my search I looked for FDI data from Cambodia, China, and Indonesia from 1995 to 2000. I chose “East Asia Pacific” from the “Tree View,” and a group of 17 countries from that region appeared in the “Available Countries” box, allowing me to highlight specific countries. I clicked on the “Select Series” tab to add the FDI data to my search, then clicked on the “Alphabetical view” and scrolled down in the list of series to “Foreign Direct Investment, net inflows (US$)” and highlighted this series. From “Select years” I chose 1995-2000.

To view my data, I clicked the “View results” tab. This screen provides many options for viewing data; you can change the orientation of data by series or country. You're also given the option to choose how you wish to scale the presentation of your data.

I oriented my data by country and scaled it in millions. I then chose the Excel Data Export option (the other option is ASCII). Unfortunately, the results required reformatting to see the data as it appeared in the database. The default Excel cell format is scientific; therefore to see the data properly the cells have to be reformatted to the appropriate Number format (in this case, “Currency”). Nowhere in the output did it state that the data appeared in the scale of millions—researchers will have to note this. From my search I discovered that while FDI has dropped in all three countries, it has been much steeper in Cambodia and Indonesia than in China.

In the “View Results” screen you can also view your results as a chart. The chart illustrated well how dramatic the decline in investment to Indonesia had been compared with the other countries. The chart was clear, with lines in distinctive colors representing each country's FDI.

Revising a search is easy to do. Just click the relevant tab, and the adjustment—such as adding or dropping a country—can be made.

The “Help” option only provides cursory information and is strictly focused on help items for a search. There is no place in the database for help with definitions of series selections, so a glossary would be a great addition. Currently the only option offered is to bring up the GDF Tables in PDF format and hunt around for the exact definition of a series; the PDF format offered is searchable. I found it surprising that the database didn't provide a link to the World Bank GDF web site (www.worldbank.org/data), given the amount of additional data the web site provides along with background information on the data and countries surveyed.

The ability to download the data to a spreadsheet is certainly an advantage over the book, and many data items available here are not fully exploited by the print version. However, the book offers the advantage of presenting data series contextually within the delivered text.

The Bottom Line: Global Development Finance (GDF) Online is recommended for academic libraries and corporate libraries (this file may be useful to support business strategy research). Given the specialized terminology of the development investment market, this database will be most useful t those experienced in researching this sector.—Ann Cullen, Baker Lib., Harvard Business School.