Reference Sources

Reference books can be used to provide background information on a topic, acquire basic information on an unfamiliar concept, or gather ideas for a paper topic.

New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online

West's Encyclopedia of American Law.
Over 5,000 entries devoted to terms, concepts, events, movements, cases, persons significant to U.S. law

American Jurisprudence (Am Jur 2d). Clapp Docs KF8836 .A452
A textual explanation of the topics or concepts in federal and state laws and regulations. Contains titles of cases and citations to law review articles pertaining to the particular point of law. Updated by pocket parts in the back of each volume. Use the separate index. Also available electronically through Westlaw Campus Research.

Black's Law Dictionary. Clapp Ref KF 156 B53 2009

Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations. Ref KF 246 .B46 1993

Legal Systems of the World. Ref K 48 L44 2002. or use JuriGlobe - World Political Systems from the University of Ottawa.

Finding Books

Wellesley College Catalog - Use the Library catalog to find books and other materials (journal titles, NOT journal articles) we have here at Wellesley. Remember to start with "keyword" if you are beginning to research a topic then, when you find something useful, see what subject headings are listed. You can then use the subject headings to find more titles.

WorldCat - Use WorldCat to find books and other materials not at Wellesley. Use the suggestions listed above. If you find a book you want that Wellesley does not own, you can use the ILL link within WorldCat to request the book.

Finding journal and newspaper articles

The following databases provide either full-text articles or citations (information about when and where the article was published). Once you have a citation for an article, use the Find It! @ Wellesleylink from each citation to search one or more electronic journal sources through the Wellesley College Library Catalog. Use the name of the journal as the title and make sure you look at the dates covered carefully! If Wellesley does not own the article, you can request it via Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

EconLit is the electronic bibliographic database of the American Economic Association. This database indexes books over 60 pages, articles in journals (1969+), chapters in books, conference proceedings, dissertations (1987+), book reviews (9/1994+) and selected working papers (1984+). Contains some full text.

Specific law and economics journals:

• Journal of Law and Economics
• Journal of Law, Economics & Policy
• Journal of Legal Studies
• Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization
• International Review of Law and Economics
• European Journal of Law & Economics - full text through EconLit 07/01/2004 to present (with a 12 Month delay); request other dates through ILL.
• Research in Law and Economics - request articles through ILL
• Law and Contemporary Problems
• Stanford Jouranl of Law, Business, & Finance
• Widener Journal of Law, Economics & Race

JSTOR - has a large selection of full-text journals in Economics. Journals start with volume 1 and are within 3-5 years of current.

Academic Search Premier and Expanded Academic ASAP are great starting points for scholarly & popular articles in every discipline. Mostly full text from 1980+.

Mergent Online - Detailed company and industry news; company profiles, histories, rankings and investment reports.

General Business File ASAP [via Infotrac] - Analyze company performance and activity, industry events and trends as well as the latest in management, economics and politics. Access to a combination of broker research reports, trade publications, newspapers, journals and company directory listings with full text and images available.

Science Direct - has full text of journals from 1995+, mostly in the sciences, but also some social science.

Web of Science (Social Science Citation Index) - Interdisciplinary subject searching of scholarly articles in the social, physical, and life sciences. Search for articles that cite known journal articles or books. Unclick the box for Science Citation Index. Use this to find articles that have used a known article in their bibliographies (going forward in time)

RGE Monitor - Breaking news and information on global economic and geostrategic issues, with blogs by economic experts and timely analysis & issue reports

Google Scholar - if you don't find what you need in our databases, try Google Scholar. You may be able to link directly to the article or you may have to put the journal title in the Wellesley catalog and follow from there.

See our A-Z list for additional databases. Think of which database will have the information you need for the approach you want.

Finding Working Papers

• NBER Working Papers - full text of working papers in all aspects of economics from Nov. 1994+. Searchable by topic.
• EconPapers
• Berkeley
• FindLaw
• John D. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.
• See the Econ subject page for other sources of working papers

Finding Legal Information (law review articles, cases, laws)

LexisNexis Congressional contains full text of laws and the legislative history of those laws from 1988+.

LexisNexis Academic Legal Research contains full text of law journal articles, legal news, federal and state court cases, and federal and state code. You can use this to find what the current state or federal laws are on your particular topic and to find court cases relating to your topic. Also shepardizes every case and law review articles.Tips for using LexisNexis Academic:

• The Terms and Connectors search allows you to search specific sources or specific portions of the document
• Use w/s or w/p to search for your terms within the same sentence or the same paragraph
• Search for various word endings by using ! For example, wiretap! searches for wiretap, wiretaps, wiretapping, wiretapped, etc.
• Use length> to retrieve more extensive news stories
• Use atl to retrieve items where your term is mentioned a number of times
• Use hlead to find your search terms in the headline and the lead paragraph of news stories
• For any U.S.C. or U.S.C.A. reference, search using uscs sec in the Federal and State Codes section
• You can find law reviews that cite earlier law reviews by using Shepards Citations and putting in the abbreviated journal citation, using spaces for punctuation

Westlaw Campus Research - legal encyclopedias and legal analysis, federal and state court cases and statutes, and law reviews (900+ titles). Shepardizes every case. Includes American Jurisprudence and American Law Reports, European Union cases and regulations. Note: Westlaw Campus has problems with pop-up blockers. It may affect your ability to print or download.

• Use the Publications List on the left to look for specific sources
• Put phrases in quotes
• Search for various word endings by using ! For example, wiretap! searches for wiretap, wiretaps, wiretapping, wiretapped, etc.
• Use /s and /p to search for words or phrases in the same sentence or the same paragraph.
• Use /n to search for words or phrases close together. For example, Hillary /2 Clinton.
• Search in the document title by using TI(). For example, TI(executive compensation) searches for either executive or compensation in the document title. TI("executive compensation") searches for the phrase executive compensation in the document title.
• Results are ranked by date, then by publication title. There is no way to re-sort.

LexisNexis State Capital - State bills and laws, constitutions, proposed and enacted regulations, legislature membership, and newspapers of record. Search 1 state or across states.

The following paper titles in our collection may be of use to you

United States Reports (____U.S.____) 1854- Clapp Docs KF 101 A2
Reports of cases argued and judged in the Supreme Court of the United States

United States Code Service (____U.S.C.S.____) Latest only. Clapp Docs KF 62 1972 L38
The codification of the general and permanant laws of the United States

Massachusetts General Laws Annotated (M..G.L.A. c. ______ Latest only. Clapp Docs KFM 2430 A4
The laws of the state of Massachusetts

Massachusetts Reports (____Mass.____) 1881+ Clapp Docs KFM 2445 A2
Cases argued and decided in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Web resources you may find helpful

**Remember, you must evaluate web resources the same way you would evaluate print sources.

1. Who is the author of the information?
2. Can you find information about the author?
3. How current is the information? Is there a "last updated" date?
4. Who is the intended audience for the information?
5. Is the content objective or is it coming from a certain viewpoint?
6. Is the information advocating a cause?

• American Law Sources Online provides links to state and local laws and court information.
• FindLaw's Law and Economic Resources - The mission of this leading Web portal focused on law and government is to "make legal information on the web easy to find".
• Encyclopedia of Law and Economics - attempts to provide a survey of the entire law and economics literature. Each entry contains a review of the literature written by an authority in the field followed by a bibliography. Articles may be dated.
• Links to State and Local Governments from the Library of Congress.
• State Law from the Washburn University Law School. (States are interspersed with other topics.)

Data Resources

Find Data - Use the resources on this page if you are looking for raw data to download into a statistical software package (e.g. SAS, SPSS, Stata) and manipulate to suit your needs. From most of the sources on this page, you can also download user-created tables into Excel.

Find Statistics by Topic | by Country - Use the resources on these page if you are looking for pre-defined (or summary) data already formatted into a table, and perhaps downloadable into Excel. You can also create user-defined customized tables to download.

50 state data wizard from the National Center for Children in Poverty. Allows state comparisons for such things as unemployment insurance, income eligibilities, food stamp programs or, choose a state and compare policies.

Resources for Finding CCDF Plans

• Administration for Children and Families and CCDF information
• CCDF Administration
• Reports of state plans from the National Child Care Information Center. Look in the text of the state profiles for links to the state's web site.
• CCDF state subsidy info from the National Center for Children in Poverty.
• List of state agencies, with phone numbers, who administer CCDF plans; from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

If you are having trouble finding a state's official web page, try using the format www.state.[state abbreviation].us. For example: www.state.ma.us. Look for a link to executive agencies and the Department of Education.

Employment Contracts

• Employee Rights Center [from findlaw.com] - Explains in easy to understand language all the rights associated with being an employee, from the hiring process to termination. Also links to state labor laws (if the state link does not work, use LexisNexis State Capital to search for the state and the title. Look at the resources link for additional sources.
• Sample Employment Agreements [Findlaw] - geared toward small businesses
• Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Dept. of labor - responsible for enforcing some of the nation’s most comprehensive federal labor laws on topics, including the minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, youth employment and special employment, family and medical leave, migrant workers, lie detector tests, worker protections in certain temporary worker programs, and the prevailing wages for government service and construction contracts
• Employment laws assistance for employees and small businesses [U.S. Dept. of Labor] - easy-to-understand information about a number of federal employment laws
• Employee Benefits Security Administration [U.S. Dept. of Labor] - note links to consumer information in the blue bar on the right.
• Employment Law Guide [U.S. Dept. of Labor]
• International
  • Employment law from the World Legal Information Institute
  • NATLEX country profiles on national labour law from the International Labour Organisation. See their list of databases.

How to Cite What You Find:

• For full-text articles you find in an electronic database, look for a link to citing articles within the database. In Lexis/Nexis Academic, look under "Help".
• Look at our Research Resources for Citing Sources
• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (APA Style) Clapp Ref BF 76.7 .P83 2001
• Pocket Style Manual (includes APA and MLA) - Clapp Ref PE1408 .H26 2004
• MLA style manual Clapp Ref PN 147 .G444 2003

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See also the Research Guides by Subject pages for Political Science and Legal Studies for more law and legislative information.

Visit the Research Guides by Subject page for Business.

Return to Resources by Subject: Economics