wbstats

New R package to access World Bank data

Staying on top of new CRAN packages is quite a challenge nowadays. However, thanks to Dirk’s CRANberries service I occasionally spot a new gem, such as wbstats, which appeared on CRAN last week. Similarly to the WDI package, wbstats offers an interface to the World Bank database. With the functions of wbstats the World Bank data can be searched and data for several indicators requested. Unlike WDI, the data is returned in a ‘long’ table with one column for all values and a separate column for the indicators.