A curated collection of links for economists

Your contributions are welcomed here.

• MIT OCW Economics - Over 100 courses covering all major fields of econocmics. Courses include prerequisites, recommended textbooks, lecture slides, and assignments. Undergraduate and graduate programs.
• edX Economics - Introductory topics, few prerequisites.
• Khan Academy: Economics - Elementary topics.

• Academic Search - Search across .edu and other educational domains. These materials are more reliable than the big Internet.
• Foundational Equations of Economics - These equations show principles behind "thinking like an economist". Graduate textbooks put these equiations in context.
• IGM Economic Experts Panel - Top economists reflect on policy-related issues. Some answers contain useful details.

• RePEc - Web services for economic researchers: bibliography, blog aggregator, new working papers, software.
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: Web Services - A list of helpful services.

• IDEAS RePEc - The largest database of economics publications (2,000,000 items). Searching through papers is easier with Google: site:ideas.repec.org <search term>. Index sources mentioned below.
• NBER - Working papers by major researchers. Many of these papers get published in peer-reviewed journal.
• SSRN Economics - Working papers, no journal publications.
• Google Scholar - Searching academic literature in general. Features author pages and citation counters. If you look for economic writings only, IDEAS would be more powerful.

Datasets

• FRED2 - 380,000 (macro) time series from 80 sources. Supports plugins for importing data into Excel, Stata, R, and others. Has a mobile app.
• World Bank Data - International macro time series. Has data import plugins.
• IMF Data - The standard reference for macro data.
• Quandl - Aggregate financial and economic data from multiple sources. Some data vendors sell their data via this service. Good integration with statistical software.
• MEDevEcon - Data related to development economics.
• Monetary Economics: Data Sources - Overview of macro data sources.
• OFFSTATS - Links to official data sources by country and subject.

Search

• International Open Government Dataset Search - Over 1,000,000 government datasets. When works, this service looks like this. Otherwise, you'll see a 403 error.
• Dataset Search Engine - Google-based search over 200 data sources, including those mentioned here. You can use Google search operators here.
• StackExchange Open Data - If you haven't found the data you were looking for, you can ask it here.
• Reddit /r/datasets - One more place to request datasets.

Writing

• LaTeX - Economists write in LaTeX because it handles mathematics and references better than Word or LibreOffice. If you write regularly, LaTeX is worth learning.
  • Beamer - A LaTeX class for presentations.
  • TikZ - An extension for drawing graphs. A how-to and a manual.
• LyX - A free and simple editor for LaTeX.
• Zotero - Bibliography management. Also install (a) Zotero browser plugin to import papers from RePEc to your library; (b) Zotero-LyX plugin to cite literature easily.
• Git - A version control system. Useful if you want to revert changes done months ago or collaborate with other authors. DropBox also has version control, but Git is more explicit. A short intro.

Computing

• Stata - An industry standard for statistical computations in economics. Free alternatives:
  • IPython - A Python-based environment. Econometric analysis requires SciPy, NumPy, statsmodels, and some other libraries installed. Consider installing Anaconda, which contains much of the needed stuff.
  • RStudio - A R-based environment. Many statistical R libraries are not available in other languages, so it's a pretty rich platform.
• Matlab - An industry standard for modeling and numerical optimization in economics. Free alternatives:
  • Octave
• Mathematica - Symbolic computations. Free alternative
  • Sage

Sharing

• GitHub - A repository for code and data. Publishing research here is not a common practice, but it's more convenient that alternatives (university home page, DropBox, etc.).
  • GitHub Pages - Simple static websites.
  • GitHub LFS - Large file storage.
• IPython Notebooks - An interactive alternative to LaTeX and Word. See examples how notebooks look like in data-science-ipython-notebooks and the gallery.

Reviews

• Most common programs used by Economists - A community-managed list of common software.
• Software for Researchers: New Data and Applications - Covers software mentioned above and some more.

• How to efficiently manage a statistical analysis project?
• RePEc Rankings by citations
  • Top Authors
  • Economic Institutions
  • Research Items
  • Software Items

• Blogs - The most popular form of self-expression among economists. The major blog aggregators:
  • EconAcademics.org
  • Economist's View - Mark Thoma
  • Grasping Reality - Brad DeLong
  • Marginal Revolution - Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok
  • VOX CEPR - Members of CEPR
• Economics Blog Search - A Google-based search service for aforementioned blogs.
• StackExchange Economics - A Q&A website where you can ask and answer questions.
• Reddit - A popular news aggregator. Has many economics-related sections, for example:
  • /r/GoodEconomics/ - Selected pieces on economic issues.
  • /r/EconPapers/ - Discussing economic papers.

• University rankings - May help in choosing a college.
  • QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016 - Economics & Econometrics
  • Academic Ranking of World Universities in Economics / Business

• American Economic Association: Graduate Training in Economics - Overview of the programs, requirements, and advices to those considering a PhD program in economics.

• Job Openings for Economists - The job board by the American Economic Association.
• Econ Jobs Postings - List of academic job openings.
• Economics Job Market Rumors - List of job openings for economists. Informal.

Please, add yourself and your economics-related projects.

• davidrpugh
• hmgaudecker
• jesusfv
• jstac
• nathanlane
• robertdkirkby
• trickvi

• economics-book - Economics Textbook (Openstax)
• pyeconomics - Computational economics in Python
• QuantEcon - A library for quantitative economics
• quantecon_nyu_2016 - Topics in Computational Economics
• zice-2014 - Course materials for Zurich Initiative for Computational Economics (ZICE) 2014
• VFI Toolkit - Matlab toolkit for Value Function Iteration on GPU

You can also find recommended textbooks for each field on MIT OCW Economics (section "Syllabus").

• Simon and Blume, Mathematics for Economists
• Stokey, Lucas, and Prescott, Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics
• Chiang and Wainwright, Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics

• Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green, Microeconomic Theory
• Varian, Microeconomic Analysis

• Fudenberg and Tirole, Game Theory
• Myerson, Game Theory
• Osborne and Rubinstein, A Course in Game Theory

• Acemoglu, Introduction to Modern Economic Growth
• Ljungqvist and Sargent, Recursive Macroeconomic Theory
• Obstfeld and Rogoff, Foundations of International Macroeconomics
• Dornbusch and Fischer, Macroeconomics
• Woodford, Interest and Prices
• Walsh, Monetary Theory and Policy
• Galí, Monetary Policy, Inflation, and the Business Cycle

• Angrist and Pischke, Mostly Harmless Econometrics
• Wooldridge, Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data
• Greene, Econometric Analysis
• Hamilton, Time Series Analysis
• Cameron and Trivedi, Microeconometrics

• Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
• Dubner and Lewitt, Freakonomics
• Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge