South Asian Studies: Historical and Contemporary Business Research

Click on the Country Information and Reports tab for a list of resources providing background, introductory, and even advanced country information and reports.  Many of these resources are taken from the Statistics/Data Tab of the UCSD Library International Government Information Research Guide which points to resources to find great background information and statistics on countries around the world. Using such resources is a helpful place to start research on any South Asian country.

The Business Research Guide is also an excellent starting place.

Keyword Searching for these phrases/keywords may be productive:

• city directories city/region/country [i.e. city directories Mumbai OR city directories India]
• companies directories country/region/city [i.e. company directories India]
• industry/commodity history country/region/city [i.e. guano history India]
• Annual reports of the world's central banks add country if desire

• Business Insights: Global

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  BI: Global is a great first-stop for business information. It includes information on companies and industries from business and trade journals, academic journals, industry reports, newspapers, newsletters, and classic business reference sources. Search on a company name. In the search results, click on individual companies to open well-organized company profiles.
• Global Financial Database

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  Financial and economic data covering over 150 countries and over 6,500 historical and current data series. Bonds, T-bills, unemployment, GDP, commodity prices, exchange rates, and more, some dating back to 1900. Note: To access, use the “Login Anonymously” option and choose GFDatabase in the left nav bar.
• Global Insight

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  Global Insight provides access to the 4 Basic Economics Databases covering U.S. economic, financial, and demographic statistics. Concepts available are U.S. trade, population, production, income, housing, employment, and finance. Data series are available at daily, weekly, and monthly frequencies with history from 1946. Although licensed users can search more than 100 Global Insight databases, data downloads are limited to BASIC, BASIC/D, BASIC/FX, and BASIC/W.
  Basic Economics - contains approximately 6,000 monthly, quarterly, and annual time series that date back to 1946 when available.
  Weekly - contains approximately 500 weekly time series that date as far back as 1959 where applicable. Whenever possible, monthly counterparts are available in the Economics database.
  Daily
  FX - the Daily and FX contain about 700 financial variables, commodity prices, interest rates and foreign exchange rates from various agencies.
• Mergent Online

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  Provides detailed information about U.S. and International public companies. Content includes: links to SEC EDGAR filings, current and archived company profiles and annual reports, historical financial and stock price data, equity research reports, and industry reports.

The News Sources on South Asia tab lists many general and regionally/subject specific news sources which are useful for historical and contemporary business research. 

In addition, there are many important business-specific resources to be aware of.  These include: