Encyclopedia articles, written by subject authorities, provide information useful for gaining a basic understanding of a topic, for getting started with a research project, or for brushing up on topics related to one's central area of investigation. Typically, a bibliography, or list, of "classic" books and articles for further research follows each article.  [Note: See the Research Guides for sources that deal with narrower sub-fields within the discipline.]

Business Cycles and Depressions: An Encyclopedia.  New York: Garland Pub., 1997.

This single-volume work provides concise essays on theoretical concepts, statistical techniques, people, and historical events related to the study of business cycles and depressions.   Includes bibliographies.

CALL NUMBER: Ref HB 3711 .B936

Encyclopedia of Political Economy. Edited by Phillip Anthony O'Hara.  New York: Routledge, 1999.

This encyclopedia focuses on traditional political economics, or the interdisciplinary study of the interaction of markets, politics, and government.  More than 450 articles, submitted by subject specialists, address concepts, theories, subfields and major figures in political economy.  Includes bibliographies.

CALL NUMBER: Ref HB61 .E554 -- v.1-2

European Union Encyclopedia and Directory.    London, Europa, 2004.

Starting with a chronology of European integration since 1947, the encyclopedia's main body is an alphabetical sequence of entries on concepts, countries, people, and constituent bodies of the EU. Additional offerings are scholarly essays of topical interest, a directory of the EU with names and contact information for officers, and an extensive statistical survey of business, demographic, and political affairs in the EU as a whole and in its member states.

CALL NUMBER: Ref HC241.2 .E97

Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History.  Edited by Thomas Carson and Mary Bonk.  Detroit : Gale Group, c1999.

In 1,000 entries on American economic historyare found overviews of eras, biographies, key events, business profiles, economic concepts and more.  Research a specific time period using the "Contents by Era" table or the chronology of major economic events.  Illustrated, with bibliographies.

CALL NUMBER: Ref HC102 .G35 -- v.1-2

International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences.    Edited by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes.  New York : Elsevier, 2001.

This 26-volume encyclopedia is the long-anticipated successor to the 1968 classic and addresses a wide range of concepts, terms, and people in the social and behavioral sciences.  (The earlier edition is housed in the Library's general collection at [q] H40.A2 I5 .)

CALL NUMBER: Ref H41 .I58 -- v.1-26

These specialized subject dictionaries define the terminology in the discipline. See the Research Guides for sources that deal with narrower sub-fields within the discipline.

A Dictionary of Econometrics. By Adrian C. Darnell.  Brookfield, Vermont: E. Elgar, c1994.

CALL NUMBER: Ref HB139 .D358 

Dictionary of Economics. By Donald Rutherford.  London: Routledge, 1992.

While general purpose, the dictionary also includes an index to subject-specific terminology for those interested in definitions relating to economics sub-disciplines only (e.g. international trade theory, demographic economics, history of economic thought).

CALL NUMBER: Ref HB61 .R92 

The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics.  Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman.  New York: Stockton Press, 1987.

The New Palgrave became an instant classic in economics reference at its publication, assuming successfully the role of comprehensive introduction to current and historical economic thought.   Named for the fin de siecle scholar Sir R. H. Inglis Palgrave.

CALL NUMBER: Ref HB61 .N49 -- v.1-4

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law.  New York: Stockton Press, 1998.

Third in the "New Palgrave" series, this title covers such aspects of its subject as Society, Economy, Polity, Law in General, Common Law Systems, Regulation, and Biography. 

CALL NUMBER: Ref K487.E3 N480 -- v. 1-2

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance.    New York: Stockton Press, 1992.

A companion volume to The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, this focuses on "empirical matters" of money and finance. 

CALL NUMBER: Ref HG 151 .N48 -- v. 1-3

Online Glossary of Research Economics.  Peter B. Meyer.  Available: http://econterms.com/

Offers over 1200 terms in the field, definitions for which have been gathered from a variety of traditional and non-traditional sources.  Search for a specific word, or browse the "downloadable contents" list.  Related terms are hyperlinked for ease of movement between definitions.

Oxford Reference Online: Economics and Business.  Oxford University Press, 2002. Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/SUBJECT_SEARCH.html?subject=s6

A searchable and browsable collection of economics and business dictionaries from Oxford University Press including: A Dictionary of Accounting, A Dictionary of Business, A Dictionary of Economics, and A Dictionary of Finance and Banking. Restricted to Union College.

Handbooks

These handbooks predominately offer statistical information, and they are only a selected list of highlights in the category.  See Sources of Statistics below for a more comprehensive view of data retrieval.

American Business Climate & Economic Profiles.   Edited by Priscilla Cheng Geahigan.  Detroit : Gale Research, 1994.

Offers profiles for major cities and regions in each American state.  Includes basic population, race, unemployment, business, housing, and education rankings and statistics, and lists major local organizations, offices, companies, and other institutions.

CALL NUMBER: Ref HC102.2 .A440 

Business Statistics of the United States. Lanham, MD: Bernan Press, 1996-

Provides annual (and in some cases quarterly or monthly) national and state industry and government business statistics, including international comparisons and cumulative historical data.  The U.S. Department of Commerce edition predates the above, and volumes dated 1947-1991 are shelved just in front of these Bernan Press volumes.

CALL NUMBER: Ref HC101 .A13122

Economic Indicators Handbook : Time Series, Conversions, Documentation.  Detroit : Gale Research, 2000.

Presents eight chapters of statistical series, including U.S. regional GNP and GDP data, business cycle indicators, cyclic indicators, economic series, price indexes, and stock market indexes.

CALL NUMBER: Ref HC101 .E385

Handbook of North American Industry.  Washington, D.C.: Bernan Press, 1999.

The Handbook of North American Industry is a reference tool for the study of economies in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and includes material on the North American economy as a whole, specific industry data, and information about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  Data enhances text, and appendices provide full-text NAFTA documents, a summary of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), and other supplementary materials. 

CALL NUMBER: Ref HF 1746  .H370

World Development Indicators. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1998- . 

Offers annual tables of worldwide economic and social development statistics as collected by national statistical agencies.  Also available electronically as WDI Online.   The World Bank.  http://devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/

CALL NUMBER: Ref HC59.15 .W656 

(supersedes World Development Report, earlier years in Stacks-- [q] HC 59.7 W659)

 

The handbooks immediately above are primarily statistical sources.  For a categorized listing of MANY more titles, some in the Library's Reference Collection and some available on the Internet, please visit the Library's Statistical Data page.

Further, the library subscribes to the "statistical" component of Lexis-Nexis, accessed through the Library's Databases and Indexes page.  That resource gives Union users access online to three large databases of data: the American Statistics Index, the Statistical Reference Index, and the Index to International Statistics. These contain, respectively, data of the U.S. federal government, of states and commercial bodies, and of international organizations. 

Much--not all--of what Lexis-Nexis cites is available in full text online.  For the rest, Schaffer Library also subscribes to microfiche copies of all the statistics cited in the above (with certain exceptions).

Assistance with data retrieval is available at the Library's Reference Desk.

Directories identify the professionals, institutions, organizations, and associations within a discipline.

American Economic Association, Organizations & Associations. http://rfe.org/showCat.php?cat_id=42

This site links to academic research organizations and institutes, non-academic research and policy organizations, and societies and associations.

Style manuals and citations guides illustrate the critically important matter of how to cite book, journal, and other research sources, including materials found in online databases and on the Web according to the conventional format of a particular discipline. Two are suggested below, and a complete listing appears at Reference Sites: Citation Guides and Style Manuals.

Bucknell University's Citation Guides, APA Style http://www.bucknell.edu/x11842.xml

Online! A Reference Guide to Using Internet Sources.  Andrew Harnack and Eugene Kleppinger. Available: http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/ .

Chapter 6: Using Principles of APA Style to Cite and Document Sources illustrates how to cite Internet resources in a social sciences research paper.

Books in Schaffer Library are arranged by Library of Congress Class number. Class numbers are searchable in the Web Catalog and browsable in the Stacks and Reference Collection.

H	Social Sciences - General
HA	Statistics
HB	Economic theory. Demography
HC	Economic history and conditions (by region or country)
HD	Economic history and conditions
HE	Transportation and communications
HF	Commerce
HG	Finance
HJ	Public finance

The New Acquisitions List—residing on the Library Catalogs page—is generated on the 10th of each month and includes items added to the library's collections for the previous calendar month.

Microfiche copies of Senior honors theses are maintained in the Library. For details on the Library's theses holdings, formats, access, photocopying restrictions, and searching for a thesis in the online catalog, see the Thesis Search page.

Research Guides supplement the broader Research by Subject pages by focusing on the print and electronic resources that are most useful for a course-specific research assignment. For faculty, the Research Guides provide structured access to the Library and Internet resources relevant to their own work or in advising students on their research projects. For students working independently, they serve as a reminder of services and materials offered within the Library while at the same time providing a gateway for information available from remote sites.

Economics 334:	Financial Analysis
Sophomore Research Seminar:	American Slavery

Faculty using Blackboard are encouraged to incorporate links to Library resources—and specifically the Research by Subject pages (such as this one) and appropriate course-related Research Guides—into the Blackboard course pages. Your Departmental Liaison or Bibliographic Instruction Contacts can assist you.

Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery Follow this link to place an Interlibrary Loan request.

PLEASE NOTE: You are reminded that it is required to check the Online Catalog (for books) or the Find Journal Titles link (for journals with articles you need) before ordering on Interlibrary Loan. It will save you considerable time for every reference that you find available here on the shelves or in electronic format.

Direct Access (CDLC) Card
Follow this link (through the Schaffer Library home page) to get further details. The card is obtained at the Circulation Desk.
 

Hours, Directions, and Maps to Local Libraries 
From the above site through the Library's home page, one can conveniently learn the way to travel to nearby libraries, if necessary.

Schaffer Library's hours, procedures, and services 
(and anything else about the Library you need to know...)

Off-campus access
Access to the paid-subscription sources listed is limited to workstations with Union College IP addresses. Therefore, a student wishing to use all the links on this page from off-campus will need to apply at Information Technology Services for an account on the Virtual Private Network.  Such an account enables off-campus users to have full access, even to the paid subscriptions.

Schaffer Library provides a range of general and subject specific electronic databases for access to secondary material. These databases offer full-text access to articles or library holdings information.  The following databases sometimes lead to full-text articles and sometimes are designed to tell you which journals are held here in Schaffer Library. But some do neither. Therefore, to check whether (and where) a title is to be found in the Library's collections, it is necessary to check the Find Journal Titles link on our Web page. Important: If you are searching from off-campus, see the above Note on Off Campus Access about Virtual Private Network accounts.

Databases & Indexes > Economics

The economics working paper is an important vehicle offering scholars a quick means of getting their results out, at least in preliminary fashion, although later the same or similar material if well received will appear in a refereed journal or book.  Certainly a "google" type Internet search may turn up a particular working paper sought; however, the following links to well-established files of working papers are recommended:

EconPapers (http://econpapers.repec.org)

Fed in Print; a Database of Federal Reserve Economic Research (http://www.frbsf.org/publications/fedinprint/index.html)

Economics and Statistics: Working Papers (http://www.lib.lsu.edu/bus/economic.html#Working)

National Bureau of Economic Research Working Papers (http://papers.nber.org/papers.html)

In addition to the links above to subject-related databases that will lead to article citations and full-text article access, you can also browse the library's comprehensive Find Journal Titles link.  Change "title begins with" to "title contains all words."  Try entering single terms such as finance, commerce, statistics, or statistical.  You can also select a subject category to browse such as Business and Economics. Ask at the Reference Desk for assistance with local holdings.

Two services included in the Databases & Indexes section, JSTOR and Project Muse, offer full-text access to journals by discipline. Users can search or browse by category/subject. JSTOR - Economics, Finance, or Statistics. Project Muse includes Economics, Marketing, Population Studies, and Policy Studies.

Economics (and Business)

BEOnline+: Business and Economics Online
http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/beonline/beohome.html
BEOnline+ provides information about and access to Internet resources in the humanities, social sciences, and science and technology.  Online periodicals, government publications, technical reports, statistics, Web-sites of professional and government organizations, and more have been evaluated by Library of Congress librarians and collected in this single location.

The Datazone
http://www.epinet.org/datazone/
This Economic Policy Institute resource offers national, state and regional times series data on the labor market.

Economagic: Economic Time Series Page
http://www.economagic.com/
Access to more than 100,000 time series for (mostly) U.S. economic data.  Browse by region, or by data source.  Also includes miscellaneous links to economics resources online.

Econometric Resources on the Internet
http://www.oswego.edu/~kane/econometrics/
This site is meant to supplement the information found in Econometrics: An Applied Approach (Boston: Houghton Mifflin) with online econometrics resources.  Click on "Econometric research links" for a host of data, journal, association, and government sites relating to econometrics. Maintained by John Kane, Department of Economics, SUNY Oswego.

Economic Report of the President
http://origin.www.gpoaccess.gov/eop
Browse or search for specific topics in full text and statistical tables of the Economic Report of the President from 1995 to present.

Economic Statistics Briefing Room
http://www.whitehouse.gov/fsbr.html
Topical access to current, government-produced economics statistics. Sponsored by the White House.

Economics and Statistics: An Internet Webliography
http://www.lib.lsu.edu/bus/economic.html
Created at Louisiana State University, this site connects to the Federal Reserve System's data, other U.S. government sites, and several e-journals or tables of contents.

Fed in Print
http://www.frbsf.org/publications/fedinprint/index.html
A searchable index of Federal Reserve economic research, with links to the full text documents.  (From the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.)

General Accounting Office of the United States
http://www.gao.gov/
Offers the current (even daily) investigative reports of this "arm" of the Congress, in full text and in abstracts.

Intute: social sciences
http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/economics
This site serves as a gateway to worldwide economics resources online, browsable by subject or searchable for specific topics. 

National Bureau of Economic Research
http://www.nber.org/
Publications, research, data, and employment information from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Research is contributed by professors and other subject experts nationwide in support of NBER's goal of "promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works."

Resources for Economists on the Internet
http://rfe.org/
A gateway to economics information for students and professionals, Resources for Economists on the Internet provides descriptions of over 1300 reference, career, organizational, scholarly, and statistical sites, as well as numerous mailing lists, news sites, and miscellaneous resources.  Sponsored by the American Economic Association and edited by Bill Goffe, Department of Economics, SUNY Oswego.

Scout Reports Archives
http://scout.wisc.edu/Archives/index.php
Provides evaluative entries to the "best" Internet sites and offers keyword lookups for any topic including "business", "economics", and subtopics thereof.

Securities and Exchange Commission
http://www.sec.gov/
Links to EDGAR, the database of corporate filings with the SEC.

Stat-USA/Internet
http://www.stat-usa.gov/
Web version of the National Trade Databank, the Economic Bulletin Board, and several other government datafiles. Although use at Union is free, a password is required for entering some files, which, like the Country Commercial Guides, are normally fee-based to users without depository library access. Come to the Reference Desk for assistance.

U.S. Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov/
Important datafiles on population, housing, commerce, employment, etc., with both an index and a browsable "A" to "Z" list of major subjects covered.

WWW Virtual Library: Business and Economics
http://vlib.org/BusinessEconomics.html
Part of the highly regarded WWW Virtual Library system, this site leads to carefully chosen sites in such areas as arbitration, e-commerce, finance, labor and business history, marketing, microcredit, economics, coal, and transportation.

The World Bank Group: Research
http://econ.worldbank.org/
Provides full-text access to working papers, data sets, and other research on worldwide developing economies.  Browse by resource type ("Key Outputs") or topic, or search a subject index of research program web sites.

World Economics Web Resources
http://business.baylor.edu/Steve_Gardner/RESORC.HTM
This resource is a guide to finding data, working papers, professional organizations, career resources, and other economics information on the web.  Maintained by H. Stephen Gardner, Economics Department, Baylor University.

Yahoo!-Social Science: Economics
http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Science/Economics/

Tools for tracking recently published articles.

World Economist. The World News Network.
http://www.worldeconomist.com/
Daily economics news and current events from around the world.  Browsable by geographic region, or by financial topic.

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