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Subject-specific eGuides

Economics

Searching for resources

There are two key library catalogues you may use when studying at Cambridge:

Girton Library catalogue (Heritage) – search Girton Library’s collection and see if items are available or already on loan. See our eGuide for further information.

iDiscover – to search across the University’s print and electronic collections (including books, eBooks, journals, newspapers, articles and much more, from other colleges, faculty and department libraries, and the University Library. Most, but not all, of Girton’s collection can be found here. See our Searching iDiscover eGuide for further information.

You will be able to borrow from Girton’s Library and the University Library and you may also find it helpful to visit and use the Marshall Library. However, there may be other libraries within Cambridge which stock useful resources. For a full list of the Cambridge libraries see the directory and check each library for access guidelines.

Search Spacefinder to find places of study outside of College.

Subject-specific resources

Bibliographic databases

  • Business Source Ultimate Business Source Complete provides selected full text from 11,200 sources, including more than 1,100 scholarly business journals. Covers all areas of business, including accounting, economics, finance, management, management information systems, marketing and international business. Additional full text, non-journal content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more. Many of the reports are published by Datamonitor.
  • EconLit World's foremost source of references to economic literature. A reliable source of citations and abstracts to economic research dating back to 1886. It provides links to full-text articles in all fields of economics, including capital markets, country studies, econometrics, economic forecasting, environmental economics, government regulations, labor economics, monetary theory and urban economics.
  • International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) This database includes over two million bibliographic references to journal articles and to books, reviews and selected chapters dating back to 1951. It is unique in its broad coverage of international material and incorporates over 100 languages and countries. Over 2,800 journals are regularly indexed and some 7,000 books are included each year.
  • Periodicals Index Online An index to the contents of thousands of journals in the humanities and social sciences, from the 18th century to the present. When complete it is expected to contain records of approximately 23 million journal articles from 7,900 journals. Periodicals Index Online covers journals from North America, the United Kingdom and the rest of the English-speaking world and journals in other European languages including French, German, Italian and Spanish. Periodicals Index Online includes the complete table of contents for each issue of each journal. Bibliographic records are also included for the journals themselves and every journal is indexed under one or more of 37 subject headings eg: Economics, History, Law, Literature, Political Science and Religion.
  • PQDT (ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Abstracting & Indexing Service) Comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day. Access is to the abstracts only. Full text can either be purchased online via ProQuest directly or by contacting the Inter-Library Loans dept: E-mail: ill@lib.cam.ac.uk
  • Web of Science The Web of Science (citation indexes), published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), is a multidisciplinary database, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the sciences, social sciences and arts. It indexes major journals in these disciplines. Because the information stored about each article includes the article's cited reference list (often called its bibliography), you can also search the databases for articles that cite a known author or work. The search interface at this web site provides access to Science Citation Index,Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index.

Statistical databases

  • ALFRED Archive Federal Reserve Economic Data ALFRED allows users to retrieve vintage versions of economic data that were available on specific dates in history. ALFRED states that "In general, economic data for past observation periods are revised as more accurate estimates become available. As a result, previous vintages of data can be superseded and may no longer be available from various data sources. Vintage or real-time economic data allows academics to reproduce others' research, build more accurate forecasting models, and analyze economic policy decisions using the data available at the time".
  • ABI/INFORM Collection (including ABI/Inform Dateline, Global, and Trade & Industry) ABI/INFORM Complete is a leading business database comprising journals, newspapers, conference papers, dissertations and theses and many other sources.
  • FRED Federal Reserve Economic Data FRED is a database maintained by the Research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that has more than 143,000 economic time series from 57 sources. The data can be viewed in graphical and text form or downloaded for import to a database or spreadsheet, and viewed on mobile devices. They cover banking, business/fiscal, consumer price indexes, employment and population, exchange rates, gross domestic produce (GDP), interest rates, monetary aggregates, produce price indexes (PPI), reserves and monetary base, U.S. Trade and international transactions, and U.S. Financial data. The time series are compiled by the Federal Reserve and collected from government agencies such as the U.S. Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
  • FRASER Federal Reserve Archive FRASER is a digital archive begun in 2004 to safeguard, preserve and provide easy access to the United States' economic history - particularly the history of the Federal Reserve System - through the digitization of documents related to the U.S. Financial system: Publications of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors / Publications of each of the Federal Reserve banks / Statements, speeches and archival materials of the Federal Reserve policy makers / Government data publications / Statistical releases / Congressional hearings / Books / Reports by various organizations.
  • MOxLAD The Montevideo-Oxford Latin American Economic History Database: MOxLAD is a database that contains statistical series for a wide range of economic and social indicators covering twenty Latin American countries for the twentieth century and beyond. Coverage is now being extended back to 1870.
  • OECD iLibrary OECD's online library for books, papers and statistics. It contains all the publications & datasets released by OECD, International Energy Agency (IEA), Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), OECD Development Centre and the International Transport Forum.
  • UN Comtrade UN Comtrade is a repository of official trade statistics and relevant analytical tables. It contains annual trade statistics starting from 1962 and monthly trade statistics since 2010.

Company databases

  • Bloomberg Available only in Marshall Library. Bloomberg provides current and historical financial quotes, business newswires, and descriptive information, research, and statistics on over 52,000 companies worldwide. You can only access the database at one dedicated terminal in the Marshall Library. Additional Bloomberg terminals are available at the Judge Business School on Trumpington Street.
  • Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Country Data The EIU database Country Data is a source for global economic indicators and forecasts for over 150 countries. It contains over a million individual data points covering over 280 series and running from 1980 to 2008. It is updated monthly.

New databases

  • Times Digital Archive, 1785-2019 An online, full-text facsimile of more than 200 years of The Times, detailing every complete page of every issue from 1785-2012. Allows researchers an opportunity to search and view the newspaper in its original published context. Includes weekend supplements. The archive supports research across multiple disciplines and areas of interest: in business, humanities, political science, philosophy and numerous other subjects with coverage of all major international historical events. This database contains all Monday-Saturday issues of the Times in full text and full image, including news, features, editorials and commentary, advertising, pictures and illustrations. The Sunday Times is NOT included.
  • New York Times, The (1851-2010) This database contains all issues of the New York Times, 1851-2005, in full text, full image forms, including news, illustrations, editorial matter, and advertising.
  • Times of India This historical newspaper (1838-2005) provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
  • Guardian (1821-2003) & Observer (1791-2003) This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
  • Daily Express Archive The Daily Express archive (from ukpress online) is a fully searchable database of the newspaper. Here you can view, download and print historic pages from Daily Express newspaper dating back to 1900. The Sunday Express is also available from 2000.
  • Economist Access via ABI/Inform
  • Economist Historical Archive The Economist Historical Archive delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2011. Full-colour images, multiple search indexes, and the facility to browse each and every issue - all combine to offer a unique primary source covering the 19th and 20th centuries.
  • Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal in digital format from 1890-1991. Users can search by keyword or date or browse issues (Click on Search Methods and choose publication). Includes advertisements as well as articles.
  • Washington Post (1877-1997) 

Working Paper databases

  • Econstor Contains all the content of the German National Library of Economics catalogue, and also working papers, discussion papers and conference proceedings from economic research institutions in Germany as well as some from the United States. It functions as a national subject repository for Germany.
  • RePec - Research Papers in economics RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 87 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in Economics and related sciences. The heart of the project is a decentralized bibliographic database of working papers, journal articles, books, books chapters and software components, all maintained by volunteers. The collected data are then used in various services that serve the collected metadata to users or enhance it.
  • IDEAS Over 2,000,000 items of research can be browsed or searched, and over 1,800,000 can be downloaded in full text. This site is part of a large volunteer effort to enhance the free dissemination of research in Economics, RePEc, which includes bibliographic metadata from over 1,800 participating archives, including all the major publishers and research outlets.
  • SSRN - Social Science Research Network SSRN is a repository for several social science disciplines but is particularly strong in the fields of economics, finance and accounting. Most papers are available for free downloading but a few can only be accessed for a fee.

Useful software

  • GAUSS It is a matrix programming language and a fast & easy platform for data analytics, mathematical and statistical programming. 
  • MAPLE Mathematics-based software & services for education, engineering, and research
  • Mathematica It is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, manipulating matrices, plotting functions and various types of data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other programming languages.
  • Matlab It is a programming and numeric computing platform used by millions of engineers and scientists to analyze data, develop algorithms, and create models.
  • MINITAB is the leading software of choice for statistics education programs at more than 4,000 colleges and universities worldwide.
  • ESTIMA's product page for RATS econometric software. RATS is used worldwide by economists and others for analyzing time series and cross sectional data, developing and estimating econometric models and forecasting.
  • OxMetrics s a family of of software packages providing an integrated solution for the econometric analysis of time series, forecasting, financial econometric modelling, or statistical analysis of cross-section and panel data.
  • PcGive Resources associated with PcGive.
  • Shazam It is a comprehensive software for econometrics, statistics and analytics. Build models, test hypothesizes and explain the variation in anything.
  • Stata Statistical software.

Help within college

Library staff can provide support and assistance. You can book an appointment with us or ask a question via library@girton.cam.ac.uk.