Research Guides: Social Research and Public Policy: Economic Policy

Finding Economic Policy Resources

Economic policy research encompasses a variety of information resources. Although academic, scholarly or peer-reviewed articles and publications are considered the most appropriate sources for university level research and writing, you might also have need of general magazines and news articles. Before using the recommended article databases to start your research, here are a few tips when choosing databases:

Start your research in a general article database such as EBSCO Discovery or ProQuest Central.
Use economic subject-specific databases such as EconLit.
If your assignment requires the use of scholarly, academic or peer-reviewed articles, try databases such as JSTOR

Key Economic Article Databases

ABI/INFORM This link opens in a new window
ABI/INFORM features full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business, and economics periodicals. Researchers can locate country- and industry-focused reports, and its international focus provides a picture of companies and business trends around the world.
EconLit This link opens in a new window
EconLit is published by the American Economic Association and indexes and abstracts a wide range of economics-related literature. An expanded version of the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) indexes of journals, books, and dissertations, EconLit covers both economic theory and application. Coverage dates: 1969 to present.
EIU Viewpoint This link opens in a new window
Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) country analysis and forecasts covers over 200 countries and highlight political, economic and business developments in all significant markets, both established and emerging. Includes access to the "CountryData" and "Market Indicators and Forecasts" modules.
For access to economic statistics, analysis, and forecasts for China's 31 provinces and 292 largest cities, click 'More' in the top right corner.

EconPapers
EconPapers is the search interface for RePEc (repec.org), an open access database of over 700,000 scholarly business and economic working papers, 1, 000,000 journal articles, 4,000 software items, 27,000 downloadable books and 27,500 book chapters. Most publications are available full text, although access to some journal articles requires an institutional subscription.
Fed in Print
Index to all Federal Reserve Board and Banks' publications with selected full text in more recent years.

NBER Working Papers This link opens in a new window
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) includes the entire run of NBER Working Papers and NBER working paper series on historical factors in long-run growth and the NBER Technical Working Papers.
OECD iLibrary This link opens in a new window
OECD iLibrary is the online portal for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The iLibrary includes book collections, policy reports, statistical abstracts, and the OECD.Stat tool, with which users can create custom extracts from the OECD data warehouse.

RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 75 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in Economics and related sciences. The heart of the project is a decentralized bibliographic database of working papers, journal articles, books, books chapters and software components, all maintained by volunteers. The collected data is then used in various services as described below.
SSRN's Economics Research Centers Papers
Social Science Research Network is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences. NOTE: In order to subscribe to the NYU network one must create an account with their NYU email address. Please note that when accessing through off-site connection you may encounter a login screen which indicates you can 'login anonymously.' If you reach this choose to login anonymously and you will be granted access.
World Bank - Publications and Documents
The World Bank is a development institution which seeks to reduce poverty in middle-income and creditworthy poor countries.The Publications and Documents section offers the following full-text free resources: (1) Documents and Reports provides operational documents, formal and informal research papers, and most bank publications;(2)The Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) provides free access to thousands of research outputs and knowledge products on development, and (3) Archives provides official World Bank records from 1946 to the current.