ECON 460: Research Methods (Svec) Spring 2025: Data Sets & Other Sources

Library Sources

Online Sources

Try searching the websites of relevant government agencies.  See some examples below. (Please note that the amount of material available in English on the websites of relevant International agencies may be relatively limited.)

• Social Security Administration in the United States
• USA.gov (The "Google" of U.S. government websites. Use this search engine to find information published on .gov sites.)
• Department for Work and Pensions in the United Kingdom
• UK Office for National Statistics (look at top for tabs on economy, business, etc.)

General Open Data Set Searches

• Google Dataset Search
• Harvard Dataverse
• Kaggle

Please note that some of these sources will only be useful for research on certain topics/countries.

• Google Scholar Search tips for Google Scholar at the bottom of this page.
• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
• The websites of the Brookings Institution, RAND Corporation, and other think tanks. 
• The International Monetary Fund 
• The World Bank, including: Open Knowledge Repository (includes articles & books) and World Development Indicators (WDI) (economic, social, environmental, & governance time series indicators from 200 countries). 
• The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Conducting and disseminating nonpartisan economic research including Working Papers. Working papers report new economic research prior to its publication in scholarly journals
• The Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics 
• PROL - Political Science Research Online Conference papers & other pre-print scholarship. From the American Political Science Association (APSA). 
• Social Sciences Research Network Working papers in the social sciences.

Google Scholar is a great tool for doing a broad search of scholarly literature on your topic:

• Google Scholar searches across many disciplines. 
• Your search results will include a broad range of sources, including journal articles, conference papers, theses, dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, & abstracts. 
• Results come from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities & other web sites. 

You'll just want to keep some things in mind:

• Coverage is not comprehensive. Many sourcess are hidden in publishers' databases and journals that Google can't search, so you'll want to look at other databases as well. 
• Search results can include links to things like high school term papers, so you'll want to evaluate what you find. 

You can access advanced search features by clicking the arrow in the right of the search box. These features allow you to refine your search.

Look for the words Get Full Txt @ Holy Cross next to an article. You should be able to access any of these articles through the library's subscriptions. If you come across a source that Holy Cross does not have access to, remember that you can request the item through Interlibrary Loan.

When you are on campus, Google Scholar will automatically show you those Get Full Txt @ Holy Cross links next to articles that Holy Cross has access to. If you are off-campus, you can set your Scholar Settings to show the links for accessing sources through Holy Cross. You can modify your settings by selecting the Settings link in the upper-right corner of Google Scholar webpage.

Click on the Cited by and Related articles links at the bottom of a search result to find relevant articles & books.