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Data, Research Resources, & Blogs

This page provides links to help students and faculty conduct economic research and find economic research papers and data.  Click on a topic immediately below to go to the section of this page with information on that topic.

General guide | Finding economic research | Guides to writing code and working with data in economics | Stata | Geographic Information Systems (GIS)| Data directories | U.S. national and state-level data | Census data | U.S. household-level data | Government spending and taxation data | International data | Data on health & the environment | Housing price data | Data on crime and the law | Business and finance data | Economic history data | Data on education | Blogs on economics

Check out the new Williams College Library website on “How to Find and Work with Data“



    • EconLit.  The best search engine for finding scholarly economics literature.
    • Williams College Library Economics Subject Guide.  Guide to resources to help you conduct research in economics, assembled by Walter Komorowski, library liaison for economics.
    • Search the Williams College Library collection (includes an extensive collection of economics journals).
    • EconPapers - Extensive archive of economics working papers online.
    • National Bureau of Economic Research -- Hosts the leading working paper series in economics.
    • Here are some places to find literature reviews and overviews of the economics research on particular topics (these are often a good place to start when conducting research):
      • Journal of Economic Literature -- A good source for survey and review articles on economic topics.
      • Journal of Economic Perspectives -- "...aims to publish articles that will serve several goals: to synthesize and integrate lessons learned from active lines of economic research; to provide economic analysis of public policy issues; to encourage cross-fertilization of ideas among the fields of thinking; to offer readers an accessible source for state-of-the-art economic thinking; to suggest directions for future research; to provide insights and readings for classroom use..."
      • Annual Review of Economics -- "Each year, Annual Reviews critically reviews the most significant primary research literature to guide you to the principal contributions of the field and help you keep up to date in your area of research."
      • Handbooks in Economics series.   There are handbooks of economics in various different fields of economics, produced by publishers such as North-Holland and Edward Elgar.  These provide overviews of economic research in particular fields and are periodically updated with new volumes.  Try doing a keyword search in the library catalog for "handbook" "economics" and the general area of economics you are interested in (e.g., "development").






    • IPUMS-USA.  The IPUMS web site makes it easy to download user-friendly extracts of U.S. Census Bureau micro-level data (that is, data on families, households, and individuals).  This web site provides access to the Public Use Microdata Series (PUMS), which consists of micro-level data from the decennial U.S. census.  For the most recent few decennial censuses, there is a PUMS data set available through this web site which has a 5% sample of the entire U.S. population. For earlier censuses, there is a 1% sample of the U.S. population.  Access to the data is free, but you will need to submit an online application describing your project, and then will have to wait a few days for approval, before you can start downloading data (this is true of all the IPUMS sites).
    • IPUMS-CPS.  IPUMS-CPS makes available data from the Current Population Survey, an annual survey of  tens of thousands of U.S. households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.  Data sets are available for every year between 1962 and 2005.  The IPUMS web site makes it easy to download extracts of the data.
    • IPUMS-International.  Provides user-friendly access to census data from many countries around the world.
    • Geolytics.  Geolytics provides data from the U.S. Decennial Census and American Community Surveys broken down by geographic area (as small as a census tract).  The link above describes the Geolytics product but does not provide access to the data. We do have access to the data in the Williams College library. Talk to Walter Komorowski in the library for more information.
    • The American Community Survey.  An annual survey of U.S. households, similar to the decennial census, with a very large sample size (about 1.2 million households per year). Also available in a more user-friendly format through the IPUMS-USA link above.
    • Terra Populus. Terra Populus integrates the world’s population and environmental data, including: population censuses and surveys; land cover information from remote sensing; climate records from weather stations; land use records from statistical agencies.





    • Geolytics.  Geolytics provides data from the U.S. Decennial Census and American Community Surveys broken down by geographic area (as small as a census tract).  The link above describes the Geolytics product but does not provide access to the data. We do have access to the data in the Williams College library. Talk to Walter Komorowski in the library for more information.
    • American Housing Survey.  Data on house prices and house characteristics for a large sample of houses. Data is collected for each of 47 selected metropolitan areas approximately once every six years.
    • Zillow.  Provides data on prices of recent home sales as well as estimates of current market values of individual homes across the United States.
    • FHFA housing price indices.  Price index for constant-quality homes, broken down by geographical region in the U.S., available going back to 1976.
    • Robert Shiller's online data page.  Includes link to the Case-Shiller housing price index.



    • EH.NET - Central source of information hosted by the Economic History Association, including datasets, list archives, book reviews, etc.
    • Peter Lindert's data page.  Extensive collection of historical data from a large number of countries.


    • Economist's View.  Mark Thoma, Economist at University of Oregon. Posts a daily list of interesting links on economic and policy topics.
    • Marginal Revolution. An eclectic general-interest economics blog run by economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University.
    • Brad DeLong. Economist at UC Berkeley and former Clinton Administration official.
    • Greg Mankiw. Harvard economist, author of leading economics textbooks, and formerly chief economic advisor to President George W. Bush.
    • Paul Krugman. Nobel prize winning economist at Princeton, and New York Times columnist.
    • Noah Smith. Economist and Bloomberg columnist.
    • The Baseline Scenario. A blog that tracks the global economic crisis, authored by Simon Johnson (Professor at MIT, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund), James Kwak (a Professor at U. Connecticut Law School), and Peter Boone (Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics).
    • Calculated Risk. Finance and economics blog, with excellent up-to-date information on the state of the economy.
    • The Upshot. The New York Times blog that frequently deals with economic and policy issues.
    • Freakonomics Blog. Blog that includes posts from the authors of Freakonomics (U. Chicago Economist Steve Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner), along with many other empirically-oriented economists.
    • Planet Money. Blog for NPR's thrice-weekly podcast on the economy.
    • Chris Blattman. Chris Blattman is an economist and political scientist at the University of Chicago who "uses field work and statistics to study poverty alleviation, political participation, the causes and consequences of violence, and public policy in developing countries."
    • Development Impact.  "News, views, methods, and insights from the world of impact evaluation." A blog by World Bank staffers highlighting interesting evidence from randomized evaluations of policy interventions in developing countries.
    • Vox. From their own description: "Vox explains the news. We live in a world of too much information and too little context. Too much noise and too little insight. And so Vox's journalists candidly shepherd audiences through politics and policy, business and pop culture, food, science, and everything else that matters."
    • VoxDev. "VoxDev is a platform for economists, policymakers, practitioners, donors, the private sector and others interested in development to discuss key policy issues. Expert contributors provide insightful commentary, analysis, and evidence on a wide range of policy challenges in formats that we hope are accessible to a wide audience interested in development..."
    • VoxEU. "VoxEU.org – CEPR’s policy portal – was set up in June 2007 to promote 'research-based policy analysis and commentary by leading economists.'"
    • Microeconomic Insights. "... a home for accessible summaries of high quality microeconomic research which informs the public about microeconomic issues that are, or should be, in the public’s eye."
    • Megan McArdle, Bloomberg. Blogs about economics, public policy, and politics from a libertarian-ish perspective.