General Internet Resources on Economics	Current Economic Trends
Economic Information by Country	Dictionaries, Glossaries, and Encyclopedias
Data and Statistics	Blogs on Economics

General Internet Resources on Economics

Resources for Economists on the Web -- a guide to Economics on the web, sponsored by the American Economics Association and compiled by staff from the Department of Economics at SUNY Oswego. This website provides a great deal of content browsable in several ways and easily searchable. The table of contents feature is especially helpful in browsing topics and subtopics. This site is also especially strong in U.S. and Non-U.S. links to data (statistics).

WebEC - World Wide Web Resources in Economics -- an attempt at listing the Economics resources available on the World Wide Web. This website includes the most general of resources to specific categories on macroeconomics to law and regional economics.

Finance Resources on the Web -- a webpage of links blending finance, economics, investments, etc.; topics compiled by NYU Professor Ian Giddy.

EconSources! -- for those looking for an overview of basic economic concepts taught in many 101 courses, this is the place for you! Dr. Gary E. Clayton has outlined economic principles, indicators, and everyday economic statistics and much more, all in a user-friendly website geared toward students.

Current Economic Trends

The Conference Board -- a trusted resource in the business world, the Conference Board is supported by a membership base that includes hundreds of companies from all over. Although it is supported by for-profit businesses, the Conference Board maintains impartiality and exists solely to present factual information and not to propagandize with an explicit viewpoint. Their website presents a quick snapshot of current economic trends and a calendar of upcoming global economic releases. More in-depth research on the site provides some analysis and forecasts, including regularly updated CEO Confidence and Consumer Confidence survey results, a monthly review of help-wanted advertising volume, and some top-level numbers on GDP, inflation, consumer spending, 90-day treasury bills, and 10-year government bonds.

National Bureau of Economic Research -- (NBER) is a private, nonprofit research organization dedicated "to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works," primarily through research conducted for NBER by hundreds of university professors. Some of this research is freely available online, including the database of NBER Working Papers abstracts, but access to the full text of the Working Papers, which are the most important and widely known NBER publications, requires a subscription. Individual reports are as cheap at $5 to download, so although users must pay for some of the reports, the prices are not exorbitant. NBER Digest and NBER Reporter, which often summarize research findings, are both available in free, online versions. This site is most valuable as a data source for the Data and Links pages. Some of the data and analysis is from NBER directly, but much of it consists of links to other sources, including government and individual scholars' sites that may otherwise be difficult to find.

World Economic Outlook Reports -- reports produced by the International Monetary Fund's country economists on a variety of global economic issues, sections of reports are in downloadable .pdf format and there is a World Economic Outlook Database that is searchable by country or country grouping and WEO aggregates (selected special groupings).

Economic Information by Country

Export.gov -- the market research section of this government-compiled trade website can be invaluable for the in-depth Country Commercial Guides. Link to Country and Industry Market Reports to search their Market Research Library by Country and choose from the included reports. The Research Library Included Reports can include: Country Commercial Guides, Industry Sector Analyses, Marketing Insights, Multilateral Development Bank Reports, Best Markets, and other Industry/Regional Reports. The Country Commercial Guides are of the most value for economic/business information including detailed information on market opportunities, political and economic environments, products and services, etc.

Economist.com: country briefings -- This site includes information on 60 countries in seven segments whose content is excerpted from Country Viewswire, a daily subscription service, and other Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) publications. Information about smaller countries is especially useful. Each country profile includes: Factsheet, describing the country and its currency; Forecast, dealing with elections, economic forecasts, and policy changes that are expected in the next few years; Economic Databa, downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet; and finally, Political Structure/Force and Economic Structure sections.

CIA - The World Factbook -- basic reference resource used by all ages (from school children to college students) compiled by the government agency and searchable by a simple pull-down menu by country. Within each country profile is a section on Economy that includes current major economic indicators such as GDP, household income, poverty levels, etc.

Yahoo Economics -- directory of all things economic on the web, produced by one of the original search directories, Yahoo!

Dictionaries, Glossaries, and Encyclopedias

Economist A-Z -- searchable and browsable list (alphabetical) of economic terms, courtesy of Economist Magazine.

BizEd -- This glossary and diagram bank has over 1,000 business and economics definitions and nearly 200 of the most common diagrams for you to search and browse. The glossary and the diagrams are all inter-linked so that a search in the glossary will also give you all related diagrams and glossary terms and vice versa. There is also an acronym finder, to help you check what all those economics and business abbreviations mean.

Data and Statistics

B&E DataLinks: econ & financial data sources -- Sponsored by the American Statistical Association, B&E Datalinks is dedicated to indexing sources of domestic and international business and economic data, providing brief explanations and links to many relevant Web resources. The site is organized in three categories by type of data: (1) Finance, which contains more than 130 links; (2) Macroeconomics, with more than 100 links; and (3) Labor and General Microeconomics, with more than 125 links. A search engine allows searching the entire site or just one data category at a time; for example, a search of "interest rate" returned 32 links to resources dealing with interest rate data.

Federal Reserve Board, Dept. of Commerce -- statistical releases and historical data from the Fed; includes principal economic indicators, bank assets and liabilities, household finance, etc. (for U.S. economic data compiled by the government).

St. Louis Fed: economic data - FRED II -- provides 1,000 time series online, and every data series is available for downloading in Microsoft Excel format (text files are also available). Clicking on a desired data set brings up a time series graph of the series followed by prompts that allow downloading. Downloads are rapid and open easily using both Windows and Macintosh systems. The entire set of data available on the site can be downloaded to a personal computer. Users may also request to be notified each time data is updated on the site. Menu bars provide links to other information (other than raw data and monetary aggregates), which the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis supplies. These include working papers, lectures, tips of the month, job opportunities, and complete online versions of some of their publications such as The Regional Economist.

Economagic -- a condensed website of U.S. economic data with a feature called "Most Frequently Requested Data Series" that quickly leads users to the most popular of government statistics.

Bureau of Economic Analysis -- a division of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, the BEA's webpage is simply divided into 4 statistical categories; national, international, industry, and regional. The National Accounts section provides quantitative data on U.S. domestic production, consumption, and investment; exports and imports; national and domestic income and saving; and estimates of GDP. Regional Accounts provides data on economic activity by region, state, metropolitan area, and county. Estimates of personal income by state are released each quarter; estimates of personal income by county and metropolitan area are prepared annually. BEA also prepares annual estimates of gross state product by industry. The Industry Accounts section provides input-output tables, which show how industries interact to provide input to, and take output from, each other. The industry program also produces annual gross product by industry data, which measure the contribution of each private industry and government to the GDP. International Accounts provides data on the quarterly balance of payments accounts and the monthly service estimates, which provide a detailed view of economic transactions between the U.S. and other countries.

Blogs on Economics

ArgMax: economics news, data, and analysis -- a top 5 pick by Forbes Magazine for the Best of the Web in its category, this clear and concise website is compiled by John Irons, an assistant professor of economics at Amherst College. The Econ News section provides links to news and analysis from various sources, including news services, government agencies, organizations, and individuals, particularly economists' Web sites. The Economists section offers a search engine to locate sites on famous economists. Also of note is the PolicyWatch section, which provides links to articles relevant to topics on economic policy, e.g. tax cuts, fiscal policy, and state finances.

AEAweb's list of Blogs and Commentaries -- Blogs (web logs) are frequent (often daily) commentaries on almost any possible issue. The blogs listed by the American Economic Association cover a variety of economic issues; the topics tend to be either policy or education-oriented. This section also includes commentaries on economic issues from non-blogs.