ECONOMICS ON THE WEB

FINDING INFORMATION ON THE WEB

You have a choice of 3 ways to find economic information on the Web: you can enter the Web address (URL) of any government agency or other organization you think might have the information, you can check any number of site directories for likely Web sites, or you can do a search of Web sites by keyword (subject).

INDIVIDUAL WEB SITES

Government Web sites

Government Web sites provide a wealth of statistical information about economics along with some reports which help interpret the data. Because you will frequently be looking for primary data to support or disprove your hypotheses, you will want to become familiar with some of the main sites. I suggest students start any search for economic statistics by consulting the Statistical Abstract because it has the most commonly used data sets on a wide variety of topics. The are several copies in the OSU library. The On-line version is at
http://www.census.gov/statab/www
If you can't find the information you need there or want more up-to-date statistics, you will need to go to an individual government agency Web site. Check the table footnotes to see which agency collects and publishes the information. You can usually enter the Web address directly if you know the agency as they nearly all follow the pattern: www.(standard department acronym).gov. Thus the address for the Bureau of Labor Statistics site is www.bls.gov, while that of the Department of Transportation is www.dot.gov and that of the Department of Agriculture is www.usda.gov.

If you don't kow the agency or address, the easiest way to locate government web sites is through FedStats at www.fedstats.gov. You can also get to this site from the OSU library's government information page. I find their alphabetic listing of subjects on which federal agencies have data the quickest way to find information when all I have is a general subject. Their "statistical reference shelf" provides links to the Statistical Abstract and other collections of statstical information from other government agencies.

If you are looking for economic statistics, the government web sites you are most likely to visit are those maintained by the Department of Commerce, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Federal Reserve.

  1. The Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis site (www.bea.gov) has both information on output and income for the U.S., states, and regions, as well as exports and imports, and foreign investment plus government spending. The on-line version of the Survey of Current Business also appears here.
  2. The Bureau of the Census (www.census.gov) publishes information from both census of population data and information on different industries from the industry censuses conducted every five years.
  3. The Bureau of Labor Statistics web site (http://stats.bls.gov) has information on labor force, employment and unemployment, hours of work, wages, education by area and by demographic group. You'll also find the consumer price index and productivity measures here.
  4. For information on the money supply and various interest rates plus other information on the Fed's activities, use http://www.federalreserve.gov. Both these statistics and the results of the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances (which has data on assets and total wealth) are under Economic Research and Data.
  5. The State and Metropolitan Area Data Book (http://www.census.gov/statab/www/smadb.html)collects into one place all sorts of government information for these subdivisions. It's the place to start for research that focuses on a smaller area.
  6. For information on international trade, use http://www.ita.doc.gov.
  7. Some government web sites collect this primary data into one handy site, although the information is usually limited to current values or only the most aggregative levels.
    • At STAT-USA (www.stat-usa.gov), the Department of Commerce has assembled the press releases presenting the most recent values for many commonly used statistics. More detailed versions are only available to subscribers. This is a good site for an overview of the current economy but is not useful for any time series analysis. You can also access this through the "Reseach Gateway" portion of the OSU library page(http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/research/govpubs.htm).
    • The "Fred" data bases maintained by the St. Louis Fed (http://www.stlouisfed.org/fred (or fred2)) has complete time series on statistics such as GDP and its components, prices, employment, exchange rates as well as monetary aggregates and interest rates. It's probably the handiest to use when you want several time series.
    • The Economic Report of the President at http://w3.access.gpo.gov/eop/index.html) not only has complete time series on the major measures in both pdf and spreadsheet format, but also an analysis of the economy by the Council of Economic Advisors.
    • The White House has "briefing rooms" with the latest statistics accompanied by attractive graphs and links to additional information. Try either the Economic Statistics at www.whitehouse.gov/fsbr/esbr.html or the Social Statistics page at www.whitehouse.gov/fsbr/ssbr.html for information about crime, education, health, etc.

Other Web Sites

  1. Some of the data gathered by government agencies also appear (sometimes in improved format) on other sites. One which has nice charts and some foreign data is the Economagic site at www.economagic.com. Others usually require you to pay.
  2. Non-profit organizations interested in economic research also maintain Web pages:
  3. Sources of data on other countries include:
  4. For data on non-profit organizations, check out the National Center for Charitable Statistics at http://nccs.urban.org
  5. The Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR database (www.sec.gov) for the reports that companies whose stock is traded on one of the exchanges must file is large and contains primarily financial information of the type found in corporate annual reports. Sometimes you find current industry, market or production forecasts in the 10-Ks. Other sources form financial data are Hoovers On-Line at http://www.hoovers.com. Pick companies and industries and enter your topic.
  6. Many companies and trade associations maintain web pages. The contents vary widely. One frequently quoted source of lumber prices is Random Lengths (www.randomlengths.com). Some others will have useful economic information, others have useful consumer information (such as times of scheduled flights on an airline's web page) and some are essentially just advertising messages. You can usually guess the URL, as most follow the form: www.companyname.com. If your first try doesn't work, try writing the company name in a different fashion.

Directories

If you don't know where to find some information, you might try consulting a directory before using a search engine. Even with a carefully-defined search, you'll still get a lot of irrelevant or unuseable sites. A less frustrating approach, especially for new researchers, is to begin by consulting a directory of sites. A directory works differently than a search engine. The directory operator reviews sites and categorizes them by content. There may be sub-categories and even further divisions of sites. Once you choose a category (and sub-categories as appropriate), the directory will give you a list of sites the operator has selected as either the best or most useful or most popular.

The best known and most popular directories for economics include:

  1. Bill Goffe's Resources for Economists on the Internet: (http://rfe.wustl.edu/EconFAQ.html)
    This site, which is now sponsored by the American Economics Association, not only has links to most sources of statistical information on the web but it also describes each source a big help to new researchers. The site is extensive, including links to working papers, and many other resources but is sub-divided by category to make it easier to use. Goffe's site also has a search engine which allows you to put in a keyword search. The advantage of his search engine is that it eliminates a lot of the tirades, news releases and other less useful sites you get on one of the general search engines. Highly recommended.
  2. The University of Michigan's library has compiled an annotated and linked list of hundreds of sources of statistics divided by subject category. The site indexes both federal government statistics and those from other agencies. The address is http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html
  3. Econ Data (http://www.econdata.net) was developed by consultants to the Economic Development Administration as a directory of economic information on states and localities which would be of use to planners. This would be a good site to check out for your state analysis paper.
  4. Project Vote Smart (http://www.vote-smart.org) provides "one-stop shopping for political information." This very large site (the printed version is 410 pages) lists web adresses for all branches of the federal government, independent agencies, state governments, research organizations, trade associations, political action groups, and media references. Because it groups its extensive listing by topic (http://www.vote-smart.org/issues), it's a valuable resource for policy papers. Under health care, you could find addresses for the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Disease Control, the American Cancer Society and advocacy groups such as the Hemlock Society.

There are other directories which emphasize sites with business and financial information. Included in this category are:

  1. AFSCME has developed an extensive annotated directory of web sources about individual companies (http://www.afscme.org/wrkplace/corprsch.htm). Though developed for union researchers, most of the sites listed are factural and unbiased.
  2. FinWeb at http://www.finweb.com.
  3. New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library at http://www.nypl.org/research/sibl/company/companyinfo.html. This site gives suggestions on how to look for company information on the web.
Unfortunately, many of the business sites let public users into only a portion of their databases. For additional information, one must pay a fee. Obviously, you won't be able to access these from university computers.

The site at http://www.clearinghouse.net is a directory of directories. Various commercial and non-commercial directory sites are listed by topic and rated. General directories on a variety of topics are maintained by several of the search engines (Yahoo is rated highly in this feature) and by the Internet Public Library at http://ipl.org/ref.

Subject Search

If all else fails, you can do a subject search. OSU's system supports a number of search engines. One will appear when you choose the "Search" option, but you can easily switch to an alternative by clicking on its name. lately, I have been using Google (www.google.com).

You will get better results using search engines if you define your topic as carefully and precisely as possible. Narrow your search by using "AND," "OR," or "NOT" Suppose your were looking for information on steel imports and exports. If you enter steel, the search engine will discover many sites that contain little you can use. A better entry would be steel AND exports. The search engine will find the sites containing the word steel. Then it scans those sites for ones containing the word exports and returns the list of sites containing both terms. If you ask for exports AND steel you should get the same list. An "OR" indicates you want list containing EITHER word so steel OR exports would give you all the sites with the word steel and all sites about exports (including those about grain exports). Be careful using more than one operator as the order of the words matters. The searches are carried out in order from left to right. Imports OR exports AND steel gives you sites about steel imports and/or steel exports. Steel AND imports OR exportsgives you sites about steel imports plus all sites about exports (whatever the product). Change the order of the words or use parentheses. You can also use quotation marks to force the search engine to consider several words as one phrase and search for the whole phrase. Thus, "Federal Reserve Board" gives you sites that discuss the Fed and its policies and not sites about federal oil reserves. A few minutes spent defining your topic as precisely as possible will pay off later. You won't have to check out as many irrelevant sites.

Even so, using a search engine is likely to generate a list of sites of widely varying quality. Many people have opinions about economics but these are not always based on facts or sound economic reasoning. As H. Eric Branscomb in his book, Casting Your Net: A Student's Guide to Research on the Internet (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998, p. 12) notes:

"The town lunatic who used to sit on his porch muttering racial, ethnic, or sexual slurs was only heard by a few and was ignored or tolerated. Had he written a book, or even a letter to the local newspaper, his words never would have seen type. Now, if he has a computer and a modem, he can publish to the world."
So be careful. Read the section below on evaluating sites and select wisely.

EVALUATING WEB SITES
How do you judge the whether or not the quality of the information you get from a Web site is good or not? Can you rely on the accuracy of the information or is it likely to be biased?

  1. Who provided the information? The information you get on government Web sites is the same information you could get from their traditional print sources. The economics profession accepts Census, BLS and FED data as reliable so you may use and cite with normal care as to appropriateness. The same would be true for organizations such as the NBER and OECD. Most of the sites listed here which are maintained by educational institutions (those ending in "edu") seem to be directories or compilations. These are sites that practioners use and encourage their students to use. You can be fairly sure these are good sites. If you come across other sites at educational institutions, be sure to questions who prepared the sites. Anyone can make a Web page about economics-- an economics professor who has studied an issue in dept, a professor from some other department who may or may not have any expertise on the subject, a student or a staff member. A Web page should tell you something about the author. If it doesn't, go to the institution's home page and check the list or directory of faculty or go to the home pages of the Economics (or Business) department to see if the author is listed and what his/her background is.
  2. If the author of the Web page is unknown, a commercial entity, a private organization or a private individual, you need to be critical about the information you receive. Be a skeptical reader. Ask why the author is presenting this information. Who is theintended reader? What does the author or organization hope to gain? Does the author have an incentive to distort or conceal some information? Is the information this source provides consistent with what you've found elsewhere?
  3. Does the Web site give you the necessary information to understand what you're viewing? Are specialized terms defined? Is there a "How to use this site" file? These are evidence of an author who cares about the quality and use of information -- a positive sign as to the quality of the information itself.
  4. Has the author provided sufficient evidence to support his/her claims? Is the information specific or only very general? Does the information seem complete or are there unexplained gaps?
  5. How recently was the information created or updated?
  6. Is this site mentioned in some of the more prominent directories?
  7. Avoid chat rooms and the like. They do not make acceptable sources unless the participants are all professionals in the field. You wouldn't normally be able to access those discussion groups anyway. Of course, if the topic of your research is what people say in chat rooms, then this would be an acceptable source.
In summary, you should evaluate the Web site as you would any other piece of writing. Just because it's on the Web doesn't make it accurate any more than having something in print guarantees its accuracy. Be careful not to be swayed by attractive graphics and layout. While researchers would obviously prefer to find easy-to-navigate sites, the ultimate test of the usefulness of a site to economic research is in the quality of the information it contains.

LOCATING RESEARCH RESULTS

Economic research is usually published in economics journals and working papers, although some may appear or be summarized in books or research reports published in book form.

  • Econ Lit is the primary database indexing economics journals such as American Economic Review. You can use it by going to the OSU library page and selecting "Articles databases" under the heading "Research Gateway". Use the A-Z alternative (and enter E) to enter the database. Other useful article databases are ABI Inform (for business-related articles) and the general Academic Elite. You can use the alphabetic listing of databases to get to these more directly. In either case, keep following the menus until you arrive at the database. Then enter the subject (keywords) or other basis for search.
  • A searchable database of working papers in economics is at http://econpapers.hhs.se. Another place you can find working papers is Econ WPA at http://econwpa.wustl.edu. You can also check the web sites of major government and non-profit research organizations such as NBER.
  • You can also search for books on a topic by searching an on-line catalog.

    • OTHER RESOURCES

    1. If you are having trouble with the actual writing of the paper, some help is available on- line by selecting the OSU Writing Center option. You can e-mail the staff with a question through WritingQ. Most are answered within 24 hours. Use the Writing Tips and Handouts option to get information to help with common writing problems such as writer's block and punctuation. You could also use wwww.grammarbook.com.
    2. If you haven't used the library much for research, work through the tutorial "Teach Yourself to Use the Library" under Library Instruction.
    3. Need a break? Try one of the web sites with economics-related jokes: http://netec.wustl.edu/JokEc.html.

    RETURN TO:
    ECON 428 pageECON 428 Reading AssignmentsOSU home pageMartha Fraundorf's home page