Harvard Style of Referencing
This is the one with in-text referencing, and a list of references at the end with any incidental arguments in footnotes. I personally enjoy this style because it is the most accessible and unpretentious of the lot.
Oxford Style of Referencing
This style places all references and arguments in footnotes, and uses Latin phrases such as op. cit. or ibid. More common in legal documents and journals, although also used in some of the hard sciences.
Chicago Style of Referencing
The Chicago style is almost like a hash of the more modern Harvard and the archaic Oxford styles. It is relatively flexible, and it utilises footnoting, but without the Latin phrases that make referencing a nightmare. See also this alternative (PDF document).
APA Style of Referencing
The American Psychological Association introduced this for its work, but it has since spread to become the most adopted style in communications disciplines as well as the social sciences. Relatively similar to the Chicago style.
A Writer's Reference
This online companion site to the guide by Diana Hacker contains useful exercises, model papers, a links library, and the like. Particularly useful for those still new to writing academic-style papers.
Funding Bodies
Russell Sage Foundation
The Sage Foundation supports research in three principally labor-related programs; The future of work in developed economies; immigration and adaptation by American society; and cultural contact between racial and ethnic groups in schools. There is also a Visiting Scholars' program, and a Small Grants program in behavioral economics.
Carnegie Corporation of New York
The Carnegie Corporation is a general-purpose grant institution, with four key program areas: Education, international peace and security, international development, and strengthening U.S. democracy. The corporation also runs the Carnegie Scholars program, a fellowship supporting research in Islam and muslim communities.
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The MacArthur Foundation is a grantmaking institution with a focus on creativity in all fields. Program-related investments are made in four areas: Global security and sustainability, human and community development, a general program, and the MacArthur Fellows program.
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Mellon Foundation offers grants in five core program areas: Higher education, museums and art conservation, performing arts, conservation and the environment, and public affairs. The last includes research on international economic policy issues.
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation has the stated aim of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation, and advancing human achievement. Its program interests vary; current interests include economic development and governance and civil society.
German Marshall Fund of the United States
The GMF promotes the study of international and domestic policies, especially those associated with the information economy and the growth of electronic commerce. It also administers a range of fellowships, including a research fellowship program and a transatlantic fellows program.
Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
The WWNFF runs a fellowship program for individuals with the aim of creating a great generation of college teachers and intellectual leaders. The fellowships are typically offered to fields in the humanities, although the Public Policy and Foreign Affairs programs may be of interest.
Open Societies Institute
The flagship body of the wider Soros Foundations, the OSI awards grants and fellowships for organizations and individuals, with a focus on the developing world (especially eastern Europe). Initiatives include those on Economic Development and Governance. The OSI also runs an International Policy Fellowship program.
Community of Science
COS is an interdisciplinary scientific research organization that also provides a large database of funding opportunities. Other than funding, it also acts as a collaborative network for the global R&D community.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Gates Foundation has two areas of international focus, in addition to their domestic programs: the Global Health program, and the Global Libraries program.
Writing Guides
Guide to Thesis Writing
This provides very good guidelines on how to start on a major academic thesis. Written mainly for prospective economics PhD students who intend to work on a major single-topic work, as opposed to the (currently) more fashionable collection of essays.
Writing for Publication
This site is a gem. It contains a large amount of information, and is a very useful source of advice for younger researchers who aspire to be published, from the perspective of someone who has gone through the hoops. See also the paper by William Thomson on Writing Economic Theory, which is now collected together with 2 other essays in a A Guide for the Young Economist.
Dissertation Proposal Workshop
This is a guide to writing up research and grant proposals and has an emphasis on the social sciences. The site includes the basics, a style guide, together with examples and a list of other alternative resources.
Designing a Research Project
Here are some basic tips on how to design research project, and how to structure a research proposal. Although designed mainly for environmental economics, writers will find the ideas presented here very handy.
The Economist Research Tools
A very nice collection of research tools provided by the Economist newspaper. Includes backgroun briefings on a tremendous amount of current-affairs topics, archives of the famous Economist surveys, a searchable economics dictionary, and a very neat Style Guide.
How to Build an Economic Model in your Spare Time
This essay by Hal Varian is advice to graduate students in economics about how to do economic modeling. It was originally written for the American Economist. A very good, chatty paper, with a lot of good advice.
Aggregation Methods in International Comparisons
This paper by B.M. Balk reviews the progress that has been made over the past decade in understanding the nature of the various multilateral international comparison methods. Fifteen methods are discussed and subjected to a system of ten tests.
Copyright Law & Graduate Research
Issues pertaining to the relevant issues concerning intellectual property as it regards the writing of a dissertation. Well written, and extremely comprehensive.
How to Write a Publishable Term Paper
Useful tips and tricks, albeit more from a political scientific point of view, but nonetheless useful guidelines for academic publishing.
The (Not So) Short Introduction to LaTeX 2e
This is a brief introduction to the mathematical scientific typesetting/document preparation system that is becoming increasingly popular as a primary formatting medium in economics papers. More online resources on LaTeX are listed in the software subheading below.
How to Write Proofs
Provided courtesy of Larry Cusick of the math department at Cal State Fresno. An excellent primer to the basics of proof writing.
Job Market Resources
Jobs for Economists
JOE is possibly the key resource for those in the academic job market for economists. Most postings appear in the Fall months just prior to the AEA meetings, that is, October through December. A U.K.-based resource for academic jobs is also available.
A Guide (and Advice) for Economists on the U.S. Junior Academic Job Market
An excellent paper on the job market for junior academics, written by John Cawley of Cornell. Details the entire chronology of the job search process, from preparation, through till campus flyouts, and includes very good hints (for example, possible interview questions).
The Riley Guide to CVs
A list of links for writing your academic CV, complete with samples. Another way is via emulation: see samples from departments that post candidates' CVs on the Web.
Postdoc Links
Not ready for the job market just yet? These links to various postdoc associations and opportunities might be useful for those who just can't get their foot out of the door.
Software Resources
TeX Users Group
The TUG website is the primary online source for the scientific document preparation system, TeX. The site contains news, information about TeX, and much more. There are several TeX distributions, these include MikTeX, TeX Live, and fpTeX. As far as TeX extensions go, LaTeX is probably the most ubiquitous; see the LaTeX Project site for more on this. Another useful tool is the bibliographic extension BibTeX (Riccardo Lucchetti also maintains a site that has an explicit economics/finance focus).
TeXnicCenter
TeXnicCenter is a handy integrated development environment for developing LaTeX-based documents on the Windows platform (an alternative is the WinEdt Shell); see also the editing platform GNU TeXmacs. For actual front-ends, consider the open-source LyX document processor, or the commerical Scientific Word. See also Scientific Letter, a plugin for equation-rich emails based on TeX. Other support software for the LaTeX world include: JabRef, an open-source BibTeX reference manager (BibEdit is a nice, faster-running alternative); jPicEdt, a freeware vector drawing program (WinFIG and Tex Pictures are alternatives); and TeX4PPT, a LaTeX add-in for Powerpoint (TeXPoint is an alternative).
MathType
Those still sold to nonscientific word processors can use either MathType, Equation Illustrator, or Math+Magic as an upgrade to the built-in equation editors. Conversion to TeX can then be effected using Word2TeX (or wvWare, which converts to LaTeX, among other formats), and in the other direction using TeX2Word (or TexPort).
Stata
Among packaged econometric packages, Stata is probably the one that comes closest to mainstream usage, especially in empirical international trade (although Limdep is also popular for working with cross-sectional data). Those working with more time-series international finance data might prefer Quantitative Micro's eViews, or RATS (or Timberlake's Ox, for which the command-line version is free for academic use). The Econometrics Journal also has a very extensive, annotated set of links to online software for economics.
Scilab
Scilab, and the similarly open-source R Project (fast becoming an industry standard, although still not as popular in the discipline), are high-level mathematical mathematical and statistical programming languages, used commonly in quantitative macroeconomics. Commercial versions include Mathwork's Matlab and Aptech System's Gauss.
Maxima
Together with Axiom, you have two open-source numeric and/or symbolic computational engines, used to solve all sorts of complex equations either numerically or algebraically. The most popular commercial realizations are Mathematica, Maple, and MuPAD. Maxima also has a GUI interface through wxMaxima.
Working Paper Databases
Repository of Economics Database
REPEC is the mother of all online economics databases - journal articles, working papers, software - almost all downloadable. Begin your search for economic literature on the Net HERE. REPEC includes a host of smaller databases that utilise REPEC data (such as WoPEC, BibEc, and IDEAS).
EconLit EconLit lists, online, the searchable contents of the Journal of Economic Literature. Unfortunately, access is limited to libraries that subscribe to the system, although most university libraries do.
JStor JStor contains the full-text contents of 23 economics journals based on a moving wall of back issues ranging from between 2 & 5 years from the most recent published issue of the respective journal. Most prominent economics journals are represented.
Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics The S-WOPEC (formerly Swedish Working Papers in Economics) is maintained at the Stockholm School of Economics. A good source of working papers on international economics (especially open-economy) and industrial organisation (especially on R&D technology).
