ECON 450 Senior Seminar

Librarian: Laura Neal (email: lneal@shepherd.edu)
Class links for Spring 2011
URL for this guide: http://webpages.shepherd.edu/lneal/econ/econ450.htm

Ripped from the headlines...

• Estimating the Effect of Mortgage Foreclosures on Nearby Property Values: A Critical Review of the Literature - Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Vol. 95, No. 3, 2010
• Feds launch new education data tool - United States Education Dashboard’ provides easy access to state and national education data, eSchool News
• Infopocalypse: The cost of too much data: Meet big government's next big problem: Digital Overload - The Boston Phoenix
• Soon, Helmet Data at a Keystroke - New York Times, Jan 8, 2011
• U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions: National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity - Guttmacher Institute, January 2010. [found via Docuticker] Following Decade-Long Decline, U.S. Teen Pregnancy Rate Increases as Both Births and Abortions Rise. For the first time in more than a decade, the nation’s teen pregnancy rate rose 3% in 2006, reflecting increases in teen birth and abortion rates of 4% and 1%, respectively. These new data from the Guttmacher Institute are especially noteworthy because they provide the first documentation of what experts have suspected for several years, based on trends in teens’ contraceptive use—that the overall teen pregnancy rate would increase in the mid-2000s following steep declines in the 1990s and a subsequent plateau in the early 2000s. The significant drop in teen pregnancy rates in the 1990s was overwhelmingly the result of more and better use of contraceptives among sexually active teens. However, this decline started to stall out in the early 2000s, at the same time that sex education programs aimed exclusively at promoting abstinence—and prohibited by law from discussing the benefits of contraception—became increasingly widespread and teens’ use of contraceptives declined.
• Teen Pregnancy CDC and U.S. Teen Birth Rate Hits Record Low in 2009, CDC Report Finds Total births and fertility rate also down - CDC Press Release
• Snapshot of Philanthropy's Response to the Gulf Coast Hurricanes - "Foundations, corporations, and other institutional donors committed over $490 million to relief and recovery efforts in the first few months following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, according to Snapshot of Philanthropy's Response to the Gulf Coast Hurricanes, a new report from the Foundation Center. This support represented 17 percent of an estimated $3 billion in private hurricane response giving [found via Docuticker]
• Charitable Contributions for Haiti’s Earthquake Victims - Molly F. Sherlock, Analyst in Economics for CRS (Congressional Research Service), January 22, 2010
• National Gaming Association (http://www.americangaming.org). See specifically Challenges that Confront Researchers on Estimating the Social Costs of Gambling Prepared by: Douglas M. Walker, Ph.D., January 2008 at http://www.americangaming.org/assets/files/studies/Social_Costs_White_Paper_Final.pdf

Finding articles from scholarly and professional journals

• EBSCOhost databases:
  • Academic Search Complete
  • Business Source Elite
  • EconLit
• Full-text Journal Listing
  Use this when you want to check the full-text availability of a specific magazine or journal.

Finding working papers (preprints), technical reports, etc.

• EconPapers - provides links to RePEc, the world's largest collection of online Economics working papers, journal articles and software
• Google Scholar
• Liber8 - economic information portal for librarians and students, St. Louis Fed. Links to papers, data, etc.
• PolicyBot, Heartland Institute - clearing-house for the work of free-market think tanks, with more than 17,000 studies and commentaries from over 350 think tanks and advocacy groups
• SSRN: Social Science Research Network - working papers
• Technical Reports and Working Papers in Business and Economics

Finding books

• Max online catalog - books at Scarborough Library
• WorldCat - database for books, dissertations, etc. in worldwide libraries

Finding data
Numerical data can be published in a variety of formats, including books, cdroms, and web sites. Data may be collected and published by governmental units (federal, regional, state, local), by trade or professional organizations and institutions (e.g., American Wind Energy Association, Conference Board, Urban Land Institute), and by research centers affiliated with universities and colleges (e.g., Bureau of Business & Economic Research, College of Business and Economics, West Virginia University).

The particular data you need for your project may not be available at Scarborough Library, in our subscription databases, or on the Internet. Students in the past have contacted agencies, institutions or individuals in order to get desired data and/or to determine whether certain data have been collected and published.

Useful starting points for locating data:

• Condition of Education - available in print at Library (Ref L112 .N377a) and online at Condition of Education
• County and City Data Book - available in print at Library (Ref HA 202 .A36) and online at County and City Data Book: 2007
• County Business Patterns
• CQ's State Fact Finder - available in print at Library (Ref HN 60 .C68 1999)
• Crime in the United States - older years available at Library in print (HV 6787 .A3) and online at Crime in the United States
• Data.gov - will provide public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government
• Digest of Educational Statistics - in print at Library (Ref L 11 .D48) and online at Digest of Education Statistics
• The Dismal Scientist
• EconData.net Quick Links - list of web sites for demography, employment, occupation, income, prices, and other economic data
• Economagic: Economic Time Series page - over 100,000 data files, with charts and Excel files
• Encyclopedia of Associations directories - used to identify associations and organizations which may collect and publish statistical information. (Ready Ref AS 22 .E5 and Ready Ref AS 22 .E53)
• Fedstats.gov - gateway to statistics from over 100 Federal Agencies such as Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Energy Information Administration, Stat-USA, and U.S. Census Bureau
• FRASER, Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research - links to scanned images in PDF format of historical economic statistical publications, releases, and documents
• FRED, Federal Reserve Economic Data - database of over 1000 U.S. economic time series. See also ALFRED, Archival Federal Reserve Economic Data
• FreeLunch.com - over 900,000 economic and financial data series
• Historical Statistics of the United States Millenial Edition - 5 vols. Available in print at Scarborough Library (Ref HA 202 .H57 2006)
• Places Rated Almanac - rankings for 354 metropolitan. Available in print at Scarborough Library (Ref HN 60 .P53 2000)
• Quarterly Workforce Indicators
• Regional Economic Accounts - includes state personal income, local area personal income, State GDP (Gross Domestic Product), regional multipliers, etc.
• Resources for Economists on the Internet - Bill Goffe site, see especially his link to data sources at http://rfe.org/showCat.php?cat_id=2
• State and Metropolitan Area Data Book - available in print at Scarborough Library (Ref HA 202 .S84) and online at State and Metropolitan Area Data Book 2006
• Statistical Abstract -- Available in print at Scarborough Library (Ready Ref HA 202) and online at Statistical Abstract of the United States
• Stat-USA Internet -- links to "State of the Nation," (current and historical federal economic and financial data), as well as "GLOBUS," and "NTDB" databases (current and historical trade-related stats such as import/export, international market research, trade opportunities, country analyses, etc.). Available online at Stat USA Internet. Reference Librarian will log you in - must be searched at Scarborough Library.
• Survey of Current Business
• Uniform Crime Reports - older years available at Library in print (HV6787 .A3) and online at Uniform Crime Reports
• USA Counties
• Wirtz Library, U.S. Dept. of Labor - see especially individual pages for "Labor Related" information and "Statistics" resources
  
  

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  URL: http://webpages.shepherd.edu/lneal/econ/econ450.htm
  Created by Laura Neal - comments to: lneal@shepherd.edu
  Last updated: January 31, 2011