PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES AND PROFESSIONAL SEARCH TOOLS:

• GENERAL RESOURCE PAGES FOR ACADEMICS AND ECONOMISTS:
 
1. For Economists:


• Individual Economists:
  

Economists with Web Pages, Econometric Society Directory of Members, and AEA Directory of Members.  A very useful data base linking registered economists with their papers contained in that data base and affiliated online working paper databases is RePEc.  ()


For local rankings here in the state of Kansas, you can find the RePEc ranking of economists, based upon their research.  The ranking lists those economists in this state who rank in the top 20% in the country.  For a much higher global standard, you can find the list of all of the economists in the world who rank in the top 10% in the world.  Another interesting, but narrower list, of some of history's most eminent economists is Jews in Economics.


You can find ratings of professors as teachers at RateMyProfessors.com, but the ratings, which are by students, seem mostly to be based upon undergraduate courses taught.

• Economics Departments:
  

Christian Zimmermann's list of Economics Departments in the United States and his full list of Economics Departments, Institutes and Research Centers in the World, and the University of Victoria's list of Non-US Economics Departments on the Internet.  

• General Economics Resources
  

Resources for Economists on the Internet (), the Econometric Society, the American Economic Association, the AEA Members' Login, the Society for Computational Economics, More Economics Resources (from WebEc) (), Even More Economics Resources (from Yahoo), Economics Conferences Worldwide, and Hal Varian's List of Economics Resources. Also see Aykut Kibritcioglu's home page, which contains a number of interesting sections on economics in Turkey and on European Economic Integration. Mark Zandi's highly regarded Economy.com provides most of its services only to subscribers, but a lot of data can be acquired from that site at no charge.  For a search engine of economics resources, see the Internet Resources Catalogue, maintained by biz/ed in the UK.  For an especially promising commercial site of economic links, see:

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• Citations

The Social Science Citation Index is an unusually useful resource for economists. If you are here at the University of Kansas, you have access to that index through the KU Library to the  Web of Science.  The most informative way to use that index to find information about an author is to use the "full search" and "cited reference search" features for all years.  The search uses last name and initials.  You can replace the middle initial by an asterisk to get all persons with that first name and first initial.  For example, if you search for barnett w*, you will find all cited publications by authors having my last name and first initial and any middle initial.  If you search under barnett w, you will find only papers published by authors having my last name and first initial and not using any middle initial on the publication.  If you search under barnett wa, you will find all publications having my last name, first initial, and middle initial, and using both initials on the publication.  Since I always use my middle initial in my publications, two initials are best to search for me. 


Here is the procedure, using me as an example. Go to the Web of Science.  In the first "Search for" box, enter barnett wa, and to the right of that box select "author."  At the bottom, click on "all years","science citation index," and "social science citation index."  Click the "Search" button.  Once the list has appeared, click on "Create Citation Report" in the upper right corner.  Wait for the report to appear.  Cited papers will appear starting from the most highly cited and decreasing to the least cited.  Then scroll through the list looking for any papers by other authors having the same last name and first two initials.  Click the box next to any such publications, and click on the "Go" button next to instructions at the top of the list, about removing items.  The items you selected will then be removed from the list.   When you are finished narrowing down to the correct publications, click on the "Print" button at the bottom of the page.  You will need to print each pages separately, if the report contains more than one page.  


An alternative competing database is SciVErse Scopus.  But it is owned by Elsevier and is viewed as biased towards Europe and Elsevier's journals.  In ranking economics departments in the US, the Social Science Citation Index is preferred.  In fact even Elsevier quotes impact factors from the Social Science Citation index, instead of results for Scopus, for its own journals.  Outside the US, Scopus sometimes is preferred, since it does not exclude journals having very low visibility, such as national journals published in languages other the English.

If you are seeking impact factor and immediacy index rankings of journal's from the Social Science Citation Index, you will need to find the Journal Citation Reports within the Web of Science above.  But there is another route to finding those reports, if you are at the U. of Kansas.  First go to http://infogateway.ku.edu.  You should be on the Databases window.   On its "by title" line, select "J".  Scroll down the titles beginning with "J" until you find "Journal Citation Reports."  On each page, click to the left of each journal that interests you to choose them and then select "update marked list" at the bottom of the page before going to the next page.  The selections are lost when you go to the next page, if you do not first "update marked list."  When you are finished, click on the "marked list" button at the top to see the results for the journals you selected.  They may end up being on more than one page.  In that case, go to the last selected page before you choose format to print.


For lead indicators of productivity, visibility, and citations based upon online working paper downloads, views, and quantity, see the "top economists" rankings and database within HoPEc, in the Individual Economists section above.

 
1. About Finance and Business Schools:
   

Business Schools on the Internet.

2. For Statisticians and Mathematicians:
   

The American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

For especially interesting mathematical illustrations, see the Gallery of Mathematics, which contains an especially interesting demonstration of the famous period-doubling phenomenon towards chaos with the logistic map, along with some famous fractal illustrations and other such mathematical exotica.


3. For All Academics
   

American Universities, All Colleges and Universities Internationally, and Canadian Universities.


• RESOURCE PAGES ON POLITICS AND POLITICIANS
  

Want to know the truth about U. S. politicians? Find out what they really believe at the Vote Smart Web.

Flags of All Countries can be surprisingly useful and interesting. For example, you will find the following statement on that page: "We add non-country flags on request only, at our discretion." The non-country flags that appear "by popular demand" include Scotland, Northern Ireland, Hong Kong, Palestine, Kurdistan, Tibet, S. Vietnam, Wales, England, Puerto Rico, Quebec,..., etc. Also this page contains useful links to a number of other interesting sites, including sites on immigration, UNICEF, maps of countries of the world, internet country codes, and other such bits of useful information. Combined with its link to the CIA's World Fact Book, this cite is more valuable than any published World Almanac. This gem of a site currently reports over 3.5 million hits per month.


Care to know to what candidates your neighbors may have contributed?  All donations to a political candidate over $200 are public information and are available online at Neighbor Search.


• SPECIALIZED OR SUBJECT-TARGETED RESOURCE PAGES:
 
1. Resources Specific to a Methodology:
   

See the widely used Quantitative Macro and RBC Home Page, maintained by Christian Zimmermann at the University of Connecticut. In addition to many well selected links, this site includes a lot of original material. Don't miss this site. You can really learn something here. This guy is providing a true public service to serious economic researchers. ()

An innovative area of research is agent based economics (ABE), having a web page maintained by Leigh Tesfastsion. If Post Keynesian Economics is your interest, see The Post Keynesian Thought archive. Regarding Austrian School economics, see the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If it fits your interests, see The History of Economics Society home page and the very interesting History of Economic Thought website maintained at the New School University in New York.


2. Resources Including an Original Contribution:
   

The following resource pages also provide their own original contributions to the Web:


• Information Technology:
  

The premier source on The Information Economy is maintained by Hal Varian at Berkeley and is , while a complementary site on the Economics of Networks is maintained by Nicholas Economides at NYU and is .

• Investing
  
  
For complementary web sites containing real time financial data online, see E*Trade and TDWaterhouse.  For information about banks, including their safety ratings, see Bankrate.com of AMBest.com.  See Resources on Personal Finance below.

1. The Nobel Prize
   

The Nobel Prize Internet Archive contains extensive information about the history of the prize and about all of the Laureates in all of the prize's fields. This site is fully interactive and permits insertion of your own links. So go there and speak your mind.


There are a number of "straw poles" each year in which economists try to guess who will win the next Nobel Prize in Economics.  But perhaps the most informative and objective source of relevant information is provided by Thomas Coupe at the National University in Kyiv, Ukraine.  He has provided two potential "Nobel Lists," one based upon publications 1969-2000 and the other based upon citations 1975-2000.  Unfortunately the citations list is not weighted by the quality of the publications in which the citations appeared, but the publications ranking is quality weighted.  He has not removed from either list those economists who already have won the Nobel Prize, so it can be interesting to see where they are within those two lists.  There also is a rather novel and interesting Nobel Price Market operated in Germany and providing prizes for participants in their "market."  Although this is not widely known, you can find the Economics Prize Committee for the Nobel Prize in Economics online at the cite of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.  The selection of the winners is under the control of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and its selection procedures are online.


2. Interviews of Interest to Economists

The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank maintains an online archive of the interviews it has conducted and printed in its publication, The Region. Many of the interviews are of well known economists, and most of the interviews are relevant to central bank policy issues.


• RESOURCE PAGES FOR STUDENTS
  

Current and potential students may find useful information in Peterson's Education Center. Also see the Financial Aid Information Page, the FastWeb Financial Search Page, and the OPE Web Site on governmental sources of financial aid. For a general resource site for economics students, see Economicsearch.

• RESOURCES ON PERSONAL FINANCE:
  

The one to beat is the well known Quicken site, which even permits a search for the best available mortgage to fit your needs. But also look at the excellent Microsoft Home Advisor for mortgages. These two sites have links to many associated online services that they provide on personal finance.


In these days of growing online banking, including some banks that have no brick-and-mortar branches, it can be useful to check periodically into the best available rates on CD's and other such deposits and services provided by banks as well as on the safety rankings of your banks.  Good sources of that information are bankrate.com and Bauer Financial.  You also might want to check ambest.com, although I find it usually to be less useful than bankrate.com.  A site that has deposit rate information internationally as well as within the US is International Deposit Interest Rates Exchange.


Mortgage calculations can be complicated, such as determining the effect of an extra payment, refinancing, etc.  Excellent mortgage and financial calculators are online at calculators4mortgages, mortgageloan.com, and calculatorplus.


• RESOURCES FOR COMPUTER BUYERS AND INTERNET SERVICE SUBSCRIBERS:
 
1. For Computer Buyers:
   

A useful source of information, if you are planning to buy a computer, is PriceWatch. For reviews of computer hardware, see CNET.  You also may wish to check directly with some of the companies that sell their own equipment by mail order, such as Toshiba, Dell, HP, and Micron.

2. For Internet Service Subscribers:
   
   Most economists access the internet through their own institution's servers. But it is becoming increasingly useful to have an additional separate subscription through a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP), especially if the ISP provides local connection from many area codes, or, even better, from many countries. In that case, it becomes possible to connect to the internet with a laptop computer by a local phone call, when you travel. For information on the currently available ISP's, see the ISP Resource Guide.
   
   
3. Private Web Hosting and URL Registration
   

For some purposes, you may need to set up your own web site that is not on your employer's server, or you may want to register a short domain name to use as an alias for your current URL, which might be long and awkward.  You can purchase such services at register.com.