Research Use Terms

Full Research Use Terms

Version 1.0. By downloading or using the Global Macro Database, you accept these Research Use Terms.

1. About these Terms

The Global Macro Database (the "GMD") is built for academic and non-profit researchers. These Research Use Terms (the "Terms") explain how you can use the GMD.

They follow the spirit of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. If anything here differs from it, these Terms apply.

Not sure your use is allowed? Treat it as commercial and contact us before downloading.

2. Permitted users

You can use the GMD if you are:

• A university or college, or its staff and students.
• A non-profit research organization.
• An individual researcher, for your own scholarly work meant for publication or peer review.
• A journalist or author, for reporting, books, or commentary (with citation).
• A teacher or instructor, for the classroom.
• A government body, central bank, regulator, finance ministry, or other public-sector or international organization, for non-commercial research, analysis, and policy work.

If you are not in this list, please get in touch before using the GMD.

3. Permitted uses

If you are one of the people above, you are permitted to use the GMD to:

• Conduct research for papers, working papers, book chapters, theses, and other open scholarship.
• Teach, and supervise student research.
• Report on it or write commentary, with citation.
• Engage in non-commercial research, analysis, and policy work inside a public-sector institution.

For these uses you can copy, analyze, and build on the GMD, as long as you follow the citation and share-alike rules below (Sections 5 and 6).

Do not re-host or redistribute it. Without explicit permission, do not republish the GMD (in whole or in part) on another website, API, platform, product, or service, or under another name, and do not present it as your own. Send people to globalmacrodata.com so they get the latest data and cite it. One exception: you can include the specific data used in a paper in that paper's replication package if you clearly label the data as coming from the GMD and point people to globalmacrodata.com.

4. Non-permitted uses

The GMD is not for commercial use, or for use inside for-profit companies. In particular, you are not permitted to:

• Use it inside a for-profit company. That means any for-profit organization (including but not limited to banks, asset managers, hedge funds, family offices, consultancies, advisory firms, data vendors, fintechs, tech firms, insurers, rating agencies, and any company's research, strategy, treasury, or risk team) using it for the company's work (business, investment, advisory, analytics, model-building, operations, or client services), even purely internally, and whether or not you ever share the data.
• Build it into something you sell. Do not put the GMD (whole, partial, or in derived form) into any product, platform, service, database, dashboard, API, model, index, benchmark, signal, paid report, or client deliverable that is sold, licensed, paywalled, or otherwise monetized.
• Train commercial AI with it. Do not train, fine-tune, or test machine-learning models that go into a commercial product or service (in whole, in part, or in derived form), or into paid client work.
• Use it in marketing. No ads, sponsored content, or other promotional material.

If you are not sure, treat your use as commercial and contact us first.

5. Citation and attribution

Please credit the GMD by citing it:

Müller, K., Xu, C., Lehbib, M., & Chen, Z. (2025). The Global Macro Database: A New International Macroeconomic Dataset. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper 33714.

Or in BibTeX:

@techreport{GMD2025,
  title       = {The Global Macro Database: A New International Macroeconomic Dataset},
  author      = {M{\"u}ller, Karsten and Xu, Chenzi and Lehbib, Mohamed and Chen, Ziliang},
  institution = {National Bureau of Economic Research},
  type        = {Working Paper},
  series      = {Working Paper Series},
  number      = {33714},
  year        = {2025},
  month       = {April},
  doi         = {10.3386/w33714},
  URL         = {http://www.nber.org/papers/w33714}
}

If the documentation names a specific source for data you rely on heavily, please cite that source too. Do not imply that the GMD or its authors endorse you or your work.

6. Share-alike

If you build on the GMD in any way, and want to share the result, do so under these same Terms. In case you want to distribute data (in whole or in part or derived form) building on the GMD, contact us first.

7. Name and endorsement

Do not suggest that the GMD, its authors, its contributors, or its sources endorse you or your work. Do not use the "Global Macro Database" or "GMD" name or logo in a way that implies endorsement or a connection, without our written permission.

8. No warranty

The GMD comes "as is," with no warranties of any kind. The authors and maintainers are not liable for any claims or damages that come from using it.

9. Code license

The GMD's reusable helper functions are licensed under the MIT License unless a specific file says otherwise. Other repositories, packages, website code, and release infrastructure are governed by the license file or terms in the relevant repository. That covers code only, not the GMD data; the data is governed by these Terms.

10. Contact

Questions about these Terms, or a use they do not cover? Email kmueller@globalmacrodata.com.