General Resources for Macroeconomics
and Financial Economics

Last Updated: 19 February 2013

Site maintained by:

Leigh Tesfatsion

Department of Economics

Iowa State University

Ames, Iowa 50011-1070

http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/

tesfatsi AT iastate.edu

Econ 353 (Undergraduate Money, Banking, and Financial Markets):

http://www.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ353/tesfatsion/

Econ 502 (Master's Level Macro Theory):

http://www.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ502/tesfatsion/

Econ 602 (Ph.D. Macro Theory I -- Growth Theory Module):

http://www.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ602/tesfatsion/syl602t.htm

Econ 606 (Ph.D. Advanced Macroeconomic Topics -- Coordination Module):

http://www.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ606/tesfatsion/

• On-Line Resources
  1. Provocative Sites for Thoughtful Young and Old(er) Economists
  2. Macro and Financial Economics Websites with a Focus on the U.S.
     1. Recent Theoretical Developments
     2. General Macro/Financial Policy Issues
     3. Current Economic News
     4. Data Sets and Data Analysis
     5. Financial Markets and Institutions
     6. Miscellaneous Other Sites
  3. Websites Focusing on International Economic Data and Events
  4. Websites Providing Macro and Financial Economics Information for Specific Regions and Countries Other than the U.S.
  5. Websites Providing General Economic Resources
• Journals Publishing Macro-Related Articles
  1. Contributed-Paper Economic Journals
  2. Journal of Economic Literature
  3. Journal of Economic Perspectives
  4. List of Pointers to Economic Journals
• Library Resources
  1. U.S. Data
  2. International Data

On-Line Resources

1.Provocative Sites for Thoughtful Young and Old(er) Economists

• The student-initiated Real-World Economics Review (formally known as the "Post-Autistic Economic Review") has its roots in a June 2000 petition initiated by students in Paris. The petition called for a reform of the economics curriculum to be based more solidly on empirical foundations and a careful reflection of concrete realities.

• The Economic Journal Watch (EJW), sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), publishes comments on articles appearing in economic journals and serves as a forum about economics research and the economics profession.

• The Marginal Revolution Blog is co-maintained by Professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Taborrok at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Launched in March 2005, it covers a wide variety of current events and economic policy issues in a readable humorous fashion.

• Paul Krugman's New York Times Opinion Pieces include many nontechnical (and controversial) writings on important international policy issues of the day. See, also the Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive for links to many past writings and interviews by Krugman.

• Brad DeLong's Blog covers a wide variety of economic topics (e.g., business cycles, labor economics, monetary and fiscal policy, health care, the Internet, and development economics). DeLong is a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, California.

• Greg Mankiw's Blog covers a wide-ranging set of economic issues, with a particular stress on macroeconomic issues and current macroeconomic policy debates. Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard University.

• Nouriel Roubini's Global Economics Blog (the "RGE Monitor") covers a wide variety of issues in global finance. Roubini is a professor at the Stern School of Business, New York University.

• I Dissent: Unconventional Economic Wisdom", monthly commentary by Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz for Project Syndicate: A World of Ideas, a collection of original op-ed commentaries from around the world.

2. Macro and Financial Economics Websites with a Focus on the U.S.

A. Recent Theoretical Developments

• Mark Buchanan, "Meltdown Modeling: Could Agent-Based Computer Models Prevent Another Financial Crisis?" (pdf,1.2M), Nature, Vol. 460, August 6, 2009, 680-682.

• J. Doyne Farmer and Duncan Foley, "The Economy Needs Agent-Based Modelling" (pdf,922K), Nature, Vol. 460, August 6, 2009, 685-686 .

• Robert King, "New Classical Macroeconomics" (html,8pp), entry in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

• N. Gregory Mankiw, "New Keynesian Economics" (html,7pp), entry in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

• N. Gregory Mankiw, "The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer" (pdf,102K), Working Paper, Harvard University, May 2006.

• Edmund S. Phelps, "Macroeconomics for a Modern Economy" (pdf,128K), Nobel prize lecture, Stockholm, Sweden, December 10, 2006.

• Leigh Tesfatsion, "Agent-Based Computational Modeling and Macroeconomics" (pdf preprint,148K), pp. 175-202 in David Colander (ed.), Post-Walrasian Macroeconomics: Beyond the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2006.

  Abstract: Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE) is the computational study of economic processes modeled as dynamic systems of interacting agents. This essay discusses the potential of ACE modeling tools for the study of macroeconomic systems. Points are illustrated using an ACE model of a two-sector decentralized market economy.

• Michael Woodford, "Revolution and Evolution in Twentieth Century Macroeconomics (pdf, 119K), presented at the conference Frontier of the Mind in the Twenty-First Century, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Note: Woodford is the author of Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy (Princeton University Press, 1999), an influential new attempt to address macroeconomic stabilization policy from within a rational expectations framework.

• A website on Learning and Coordination in Decentralized Market Economies maintained by Leigh Tesfatsion (Econ, Iowa State University) provides pointers to materials related to the computational study of macroeconomies modeled as dynamic systems of interacting agents.

• The Economic Growth Resources Website maintained by Jonathan Temple (Nuffield College, Oxford) provides pointers to economic growth resources on the internet, including data, literature, and working papers.

• A website on the Econonomics of Networks is maintained by Nicholas Economides (Stern School of Business, NYU).

• A website on the Formation of Economic and Social Networks is maintained by Leigh Tesfatsion (Economics, Iowa State University).

• A website on Information Economics is maintained by Hal Varian (SIMS, UC Berkeley).

• A website on Learning and the Embodied Mind is maintained by Leigh Tesfatsion (Economics, Iowa State University). Highlighted at this site is research on learning representions for strategically interacting agents in multi-market contexts, and research on behavioral economics more generally as motivated by human-subject experiments.

• A website on Macro Basics and the Evolution of Macroeconomic Theory is maintained by the Department of Economics at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI. Online essays are provided covering the development of macroeconomic theory in the 1930s, the 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s, with a planned additional essay for the 1990s.

• The Quantitative Macro and Real Business Cycle Home Page maintained by Christian Zimmermann (U of Quebec at Montreal) provides pointers to work on stochastic dynamic general equilibrium theory motivated by the methods and aims of real business cycle theory.

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B. General Macro/Financial Policy Issues

• The annual Economic Report of the President is available online for current and past years.

• The U.S. Office of Management and Budget provides information on current and past U.S. budgets.

• The Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs (U.S. State Department) issues reports on a variety of economic issues.

• The Brookings Institute in Washington D.C. is a private, independent, nonprofit research organization that "seeks to improve the performance of American institutions, the effectiveness of government programs, and the quality of U.S. public policies." Macro source materials available for downloading at the Brooking Institute's website include Brookings policy briefs as well as research reports on foreign policy and governmental studies.

• The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a nonpartisan research organization and policy institute that conducts research and analysis on a range of U.S. government policies and programs, with an emphasis on those affections low-income and moderate-income people.

• The Congressional Budget Office (U.S. Congress) provides information regarding the finances and programs of the U.S. Federal government.

• The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) (Cambridge, Massachusetts) maintains a website that highlights the recent NBER-sponsored publications of economists associated with the NBER, outlines major NBER programs and projects, provides information on NBER business cycle dating, and lists pointers to related websites of interest.

• The New Economy Index provides resources relating to structural transition that the U.S. economy is currently undergoing in response to advances in information technology (IT).

• The Roubini Global Economics (RGE) site is maintained by Nouriel Roubini (Stern School of Business, New York University). It provides links to a variety of macro source materials, with a stress on current macro policy issues facing the U.S.

• Brad DeLong's website (Econ, UC Berkeley) provides pointers to various interesting macro source materials, including a paper entitled "Old Rules for the New Economy" that discusses what he perceives to be the most important new aspect of the post-industrial U.S. economy -- the fact that information processing and distribution have become one of the leading sectors.

• Paul Krugman's NYT Opinion Pieces include many nontechnical (and controversial) writings on important international policy issues of the day.

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C. Current Economic News

• Bloomberg Business Week is a weekly economic news magazine, with a stress on the U.S.

• The Economist is a highly regarded economic news magazine with an international orientation.

• The Wall Street Journal is a daily U.S. newspaper featuring both domestic and international news.

• The Financial Times publishes global business news and analysis.

• The New York Times is a daily U.S. newspaper featuring both domestic and international news.

• CNN Financial Pages

• The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis provides a variety of news features and general information regarding the U.S. economy.

• Moody's Analytics maintains a website titled The Dismal Scientist: Economics Made Clear. This site provides analysis of major economic events around the world.

• The Peterson Institute for International Economics is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution devoted to the study of international economic policy.

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D. Data Sets and Data Analysis

• The World Economic Outlook (IMF)

• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009

• Unemployment Rates by Country

• Unemployment Rates for U.S. Metro Areas (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

• Ease of Doing Business (World Bank)

• The Economagic Economic Time Series Page maintained by Economagic Inc. provides access to an extensive variety of economic time series data (primarily U.S.) with customized graphing and printing facilities.

• The Gapminder site "unveils the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics." The site focuses on comparative time series data for economic, social, and environmental development at local, national, and global levels.

• The Library of Congress maintains a site titled Databases: Library of Congres E-Resources Online Catalog that provides a comprehensive listing of free, easily available time-series data (primarily U.S.) useful for economic research.

• A monthly compilation of economic information prepared by the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) for the Joint Economic Committee can be found at Economic Indicators: Main Page

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a public database giving current and historical data for a large variety of economic variables, including inflation and consumer spending, employment and unemployment, wages, productivity, exports and imports, and foreign labor statistics.

• The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) provides comprehensive information about the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), including downloadable and interactively accessible data, at a site titled National Income Accounts. The BEA also provides a data page giving a Summary Overview of the U.S. economy in recent years and in recent quarters.

• The United States Interational Trade Commission (ITC) provides direct access to data and reports on U.S. international trade at a website titled Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb

• STAT-USA: Internet provides access to current and historical economic and financial releases and to economic data both for the U.S. and abroad.

• The U.S. Federal Reserve Board maintains up-to-date Financial Time Series Data available for downloading in a format suitable for Excel spreadsheet table and graphical representations.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis provides a database of over 1000 U.S. economic time series in a variety of easy-to-use formats (e.g., MS Excel and text formats), also viewable in chart form, at a site titled FRED II (Federal Reserve Economic Data).

• Market Research International (Beaumont, Texas) supports a site titled the Financial Forecast Center. This site provides freely available forecasts for stock prices, interest rates, foreign exchange rates, and other key economic indicators. Current economic indicators and historical data/graphs are also provided.

• The Congressional Budget Office Website provides detailed data pertaining to U.S. Federal government expenditures and the financing of these expenditures, past and present, as well as projected budget surpluses and/or deficits under alternative possible expenditure and financing scenarios for the future.

• The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) disseminates official information from all three branches of the U.S. Federal Government.

• The World Bank Data Site provides download access to thousands of indicators from Workd Bank data sets.

• The United States Department of Commerce consists of twelve different agencies providing data and assistance to U.S. businesses.

• A list of pointers to Useful Economics Sites is maintained by the Department of Economics at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI. These sites cover "good starting places," current U.S. data series, international data, historical U.S. data series, general sources, market information, and company information.

• The FedWorld Information Network provides a comprehensive central access point for locating and acquiring U.S. government information.

• The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) website features a searchable index to over 5000 NBER working papers and books issued since 1978, a macroeconomic history database (3500 different time series), the Penn-World Tables of country data, as well as other materials.

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides Foreign Labor Statistics for a variety of countries.

• The U.S. Census Bureau maintains a website on International Statistical Agencies.

• The Pacific Exchange Rate Service, maintained by Werner Antweiler (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada), provides access to current and historic daily exchange rates through an on-line database retrieval and plotting system. Other resources include: a list of the currencies of the world; analyses and trend projections for the Canadian Dollar, the U.S. dollar, and the Euro; surveys related to exchange rate issues; and links to other online exchange rate services.

• Economic History Services is a fileserver that provides resources and promotes communication among scholars in economic history and related fields.

• The Inflation Page maintained by Crest Capital discusses various measures of inflation and enables you to calculate the average rate of inflation over past periods in U.S. history from 1913 through 1998 using the consumer price index (CPI).

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E. Financial Markets and Institutions

• Campbell R. Harvey (Fuqua School of Business, Duke University) maintains a Hypertextual Finance Glossary that includes over 6,000 entries in alphabetical order, with over 16,000 hyperlinks.

• Research publications from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRB-NY) are available at the FRB-NY Research Site.

• The Federal Reserve Board maintains a website that explains its structure and operations and also provides recent press releases, testimony, and speeches by Federal Reserve officials.

• The most important Federal regulations imposed on depository institutions in the United States are listed and explained in a Regulations website maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRB-NY) maintains a Publications Catalog that provides an extensive list of pointers to FRB-NY publications on the operations of the Federal Reserve System, which is the central bank of the United States. Examples of topics covered include: Buying and selling of Treasury securities; reserves; currency processing and destruction; and open market operations.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco maintains a website titled U.S. Monetary Policy: An Introduction. This site describes U.S. monetary policy as it is currently conducted by the Federal Reserve System (Fed) by addressing a series of issues, including the structure of the Fed, the Fed's goals, the tool's used by the Fed to implement its monetary policies, and how these monetary policies affect the U.S. economy.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis maintains a website titled Monetary Policy that provides a list of links related to Fed monetary policy.

• The U.S. Treasury maintains a website titled Treasury Direct that provides pointers to materials explaining the basics of Treasury securities (bills, notes, and bonds), purchase methods, auction rates, and information about government securities market regulations.

• A Website on the History of Money is maintained by Glyn Davies and Roy Davies (University of Exeter, UK). See, also, the website maintained by Roy Davies titled Money: Past, Present, and Future which provides sources of information on monetary history, contemporary developments, and the prospects for electronic money.

• Martin Shubik (Economics, Yale University) maintains a website titled The Museum of Money and Financial Institutions. The objective of the site is to provide an informative, interesting, and entertaining virtual science museum to promote the understanding of money and financial institutions through interactive exhibits.

• The American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) maintains a website on Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Banking, Insurance, Finance, and Investing.

• The Bank for International Settlements maintains a website on central banks around the world.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis maintains a website titled Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) that provides pointers to a variety of data bases (e.g., exchange rate data, commercial banking data, monetary data, etc.) as well as to its own publications and statistical releases.

• The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) provides a central data repository for FDIC-insured institutions.

• James Garven (Business Administration, Louisiana State University) maintains a guide to online financial economics resources at a website titled FINWeb. Included among these resources are journals, working papers, databases, other other finance-related websites.

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F. Miscellaneous Other Sites

• Ray Fair (Yale University) maintains a website on the (Fair) US Econometric Model.

• WebEc-Macroeconomics is a website maintained at Washington University, St. Louis, that provides an extensive annotated listing of pointers to macro-related resources.

• The History of Economics Society Homepage provides onine access to resources for teaching, scholarship, and research in the history of economics and the history of economic thought. See also the History of Economic Thought website maintained by Gonçalo Fonseca and Leanne Ussher (Economics Department, New School University, New York, NY).

3. Websites Focusing on International Economic Data and Events

• Resources for Economists on the Internet (sponsored by the American Economic Association) maintains an annotated list of pointers to World and Non-U.S. Data

• The World Bank maintains extensive resources on issues related to world growth and development. See, for example, the World Bank sites devoted to Macroeconomics and Growth and Beyond Economic Growth: Meeting the Challenges of Global Development. Accompanying the latter site is a useful Glossary of Basic Terms related to world economic growth and development.

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international organization among countries based on voluntary membership. As of 2001, 183 countries were members of the IMF. The stated goals of the IMF are: to promote monetary cooperation, exchange stability, and orderly exchange arrangements; to foster economic growth and high levels of employment; and to provide temporary financial assistance to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustments. The IMF maintains on-line resources regarding its own organization and function, the current economic situation of its member countries, and current world events.

• United Nations Statistics Division

• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an organization that coordinates policy among developed countries.

• The CIA World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for approximately 267 world entities.

• CountryWatch.Com (founded and managed by personnel associated with the United States Military Academy) provides continually updated political and economic coverage for each of the 191 countries of the world.

• European Union in the US is an official site sponsored by the European Union that provides information specifically directed towards Americans regarding the history, organization, and activities of the European Union.

• The European Central Bank maintains a general resource site on the introduction of the euro titled The Euro.

• Nicholas Roubini (New York University) maintains a resource site titled European Monetary Union and the Euro that provides notes, discussion questions, and readings related to the recent introduction of the euro among the member countries of the European Monetary Union.

• GapMinder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualizes human development. The site is maintained in collaboration with universities, UN organizations, public agencies, and non-governmental organizations by site-founders Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, and Hans Rosling (Stockholm) in February 2005.

4. Websites Providing Macro and Financial Economics Information for Specific Regions and Countries Other than the U.S.

Asia:

The Asian Development Bank

Australia:

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

Brazil:

Central Bank of Brazil

Statistics (CIA-World Fact Book)

Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics

Canada:

Statistics Canada (CANSIM)

China (PRC):

People's Bank of China

National Bureau of Statistics of China

Croatia:

Central Bureau of Statistics (Croatian Government Site)

Ministry of Economy (Croatian Government Site)

Europe:

The Euro Homepage maintained by researchers at the European University Institute, provides links to a wide variety of source materials related to the European Monetary Union (EMU).

The European Commission

Hungary:

Hungarian Central Statistical Office

India:

India One Stop

Ministry of Finance (India)

Ireland:

Ireland News Site (Economist Magazine)

Italy:

National Institute of Statistics (Italy)

Japan:

Economic Planning Agency of Japan

Statistics Bureau and Statistics Center (Japan)

Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (Japan)

Malaysia:

Statistics (Malaysian Industrial Development Authority)

Mexico:

Banco de México

Mongolia:

The Bank of Mongolia

Mauritius:

Ministry of Finance and Economic Development

Nigeria:

Statistics (Country Watch)

Statistics (CIA-World Fact Book)

Poland:

Polish Official Statistics

The Polish Agency for Foreign Investment (PAIZ)

National Bank of Poland

Russia:

Federal State Statistics Service

Central Bank of Russia

The RosBusinessConsulting Analytic Service (in Russian) provides a collection of analytic publications by in-house and outside experts on Russia.

Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia Economic Statistics (CIA-World Fact Book)

South Korea:

Korea Institute of Finance

Bank of Korea

Korea Development Institute

Sweden:

National Institute of Economic Research

Statistiska Central Bryarn (Statistics Sweden Homepage)

Turkey:

Turkish Statistical Institute

Prime Ministry State Planning Organization (in Turkish)

Turkish Treasury (in Turkish)

Turkish Republic Central Bank (in Turkish)

The Turkish Constitution (in Turkish)

5. Websites Providing General Economic Resources

• The WWW virtual library of Resources for Economists on the Internet (RFE), maintained by Bill Goffe (University of Southern Mississippi), provides over 700 annotated and catalogued listings of resource materials for economists that are available on the internet.

• EconomicSearch.Com provides a collection of useful links for economics students and faculty separated into categories such as money and banking, statistics and data analysis, etc.

• The Rutger University Resource Page includes numerous links to economics resources.

• The extensive Economics Working Papers Archive (Econ-WP) maintained by Bob Parks (Washington University at St. Louis) provides rapid dissemination of new research for both faculty and students.

• NetEc (Economists on the Internet) contains a searchable base of information on economic papers available for downloading from the internet through websites maintained by economic researchers.

• New Economics Papers (NEP) is a family of mailing lists that disseminate new papers in economics, including papers from the NBER, from all U.S. Federal Reserve banks, and from many other departments and institutions.

• The Scout Report for Business and Economics is a biweekly publication that offers a selective collection of internet resources covering a variety of economics and business topics.

• The Handbooks in Economics website maintained by North-Holland/Elsevier Science provides tables of contents for all voumes of the Handbooks in Economics Series published to date as well as chapter summaries.

• Inomics is an internet service for economists administered by Thorsten Wichmann (Berlecon Research, Germany) that offers a search engine for economics information, a listing of job openings for economists from all over the world, and announcements of economic conferences. It began operation in June 1998.

Journals Publishing Macro Related Articles

1. Contributed-Paper Economic Journals

Macro-oriented articles are sprinkled throughout most of the general mainstream economic journals such as the Journal of Political Economy (JPE), the International Economic Review (IER), and the American Economic Review (AER). More specialized articles can be found in the Journal of Monetary Economics (JME), the Journal of Public Economics (JPubE), the Journal of Public Economic Theory (JPET), the Journal of Economic Growth (JEG), Macroeconomic Dynamics (MD), the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Macroeconomics, the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (JEDC), the Emerging Markets Review, the Review of Financial Economics, and the Global Finance Journal.

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2. Journal of Economic Literature

Each issue of the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) begins with two or three invited survey articles on various economic topics. Articles appearing in recent journal issues are listed, sorted once by journal source and again by subject matter. Abstracts are provided for a selected subset of these articles. There is also a listing of recently published books relevant for economists, some of which are reviewed or abstracted.

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3. Journal of Economic Perspectives

Each issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) contains an assortment of invited articles discussing current topics of interest. The articles tend to be well-written, lively, and informative expository introductions, with a minimum of technical detail, but with a useful list of references for further study. JEP can be obtained very cheaply (along with the AER and JEL) by becoming a member of the American Economic Association.

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4. On-Line Listings

An on-line list of links to economic journals is available. See, also, the JSTOR journal search site for online access to journal articles, reviews, and opinion pieces.

Library Resources

1. U.S. Data

The Economic Report of the President (ERP), put out each February;

Economic Indicators (a monthly supplement to ERP);

Business Conditions Digest (monthly);

Survey of Current Business (monthly, Bureau of Economic Analysis);

Reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (branch of the Labor Department);

Federal Reserve Bulletin (put out by Federal Reserve Board).

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2. International Data

Holdings by CARD at ISU;

United Nations publications (wide variety);

World Bank reports;

International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports.

Copyright © 2013 Leigh Tesfatsion. All Rights Reserved.