ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the progress made since the Second World War in data availability for development research, mainly in the field of macroeconomic aggregates. It focuses on data sources and data-gathering techniques deemed to be the most promising for large pay-offs in further development research. In the area of cross-country comparisons, the data base has not allowed an adequate separation of 'true' structural differences from those which show up in national accounts data simply because of differences in relative prices from country to country. The chapter discusses that there is no shortage of hypotheses, hunches and insights which could be tested against Third World data, nor a lack of analytically oriented concepts, as phrased by Simon Kuznets, to guide in translating raw primary data into quantitative economic measures. It focuses on data sources and techniques of obtaining data which promise the largest pay-offs in development research.
