The Foreign Returns of Nations Data Set — Data Set of the Paper: Exportweltmeister: Germany’s Foreign Investment Returns in International Comparison

This data set contains annual rates of returns on capital exports across countries over the period 1970–2023. We compute returns separately for major asset classes (debt, equity, direct investments) and report them in both nominal and real terms.

We provide two versions of the data:

• A benchmark sample covering 13 advanced economies from Hünnekes et al. (2025), spanning 1970–2020.

• An extended sample of 157 countries based on available IMF BOP and IIP data, covering 1971–2023.

Moreover, we include detailed documentation on how to replicate and update the return series using publicly available sources.