International Financial Statistics

International Financial Statistics is a dependable source of international statistics in the field of finance. It provides latest data necessary for the analysis of international inflation and deflation. It is actually a data-bank, which contains financial informations about the economic growth or downfall in the countries of the world.
IFS provides the data on several subjects related to international and domestic finance including the data on exchange rates, international liquidity, international banking, money and banking, interest rates, prices, production, international transactions, government accounts, and national accounts.

It has become a popular data source for the empirical research in economics. International financial statistics are source of information on various elements of the global financial market.

They include data on:

• Statistics about international banks operating in different countries
• Securities Statistics informing about the performances of the global security exchanges. This includes information on International debt securities, international equities, and domestics securities. The prime purpose behind publishing securities statistics is to monitor the international financial market's activity closely. The data can be used to understand the demand and supply factors of the market.
• Derivatives Statistics
• Effective exchange rate.
• Foreign exchange statistics which defines the international foreign exchange performances. The main purpose behind the statistics is to present information on turnover in the international foreign exchange market and the outstanding amounts in these markets.
• External debt situation of different countries
• Payment statistics, which includes payment and settlement systems in different countries

The new developing relationships between financial and non-financial firms, the level and compactness of activities in financial markets as well as overflows between different market sections can be analyzed using these statistics. Apart from allowing perceptivities into the international financial flows and external exposures and risk factors of lenders and borrowers, the international financial statistics serves valuable information on the structural growths in international financial markets. All these are classified informations and are very hard to get from elsewhere. When these statistics are connected with other sources serving informations on market liquidity and financial asset prices, external ratings, trading patterns, non-bank financial firms and non-financial companies, these statistics becomes more relevant. Once these different data are joined with the statistics it provides the investors, companies and policymakers to asses the present situation of different types of financial risks in domestic and international markets.

The financial conceptions have usually started in the competitive surroundings of the international financial markets, and the statistics have been a very useful tool to seize structural and market developments in global markets at an early stage. But, the limits between international and national markets are becoming more confused and the worthiness of the these statistics are, of course, possibly affected by this fact. This could probably, constitute some demerits of the statistics as it may become gradually difficult to determine international and domestic financial market activities individually.