Or...you could simply use the World Bank's website and free API that already offers much public data to download in various formats: http://data.worldbank.org/

Or...you could simply use the World Bank's website and free API that already offers much public data to download in various formats: http://data.worldbank.org/ http://data.worldbank.org/ A similar data repository is available from the European Central Bank: http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/ http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/