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Economics

Recommended websites

An evaluated listing of resources in the field of business information

Latest Business news items from the BBC

IASE is the education section of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) . The website contains online resources include journals and conference proceedings, 

Founded in 1920, the National Bureau of Economic Research is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community.

An online resource from CIPFA (The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy) providing guidance, commentary and legal context for financial managers in the local and public services. We have an institutional subscription but all users need to register while on campus to receive their unique username and password. as this is an IP registered resource.

A list from Wikipedia containing the world's major stock exchanges

There are a number of professional bodies within the field and related subjects that have their own websites where you can find information on journals the body publishes, upcoming conferences and seminars and potentially well as vacancies.

Library Services subscribes to Box of Broadcasts (BoB), which is an off-air recording and media archive service covering 65 free-to-air channels from Freeview and Freesat. This includes ten foreign language channels. BoB's scheduling service allows you to 'record' TV and radio programmes that are due to be broadcast over the next seven days as well as retrieving programmes from the last seven days from a selected list of recorded channels. BoB also contains access to programmes held in the extensive BUFVC archive.

After a programme is recorded you can:

  • stream a Flash video in a web page
  • store the programmes you are interested in watching on  self-created playlists
  • create clips from the programmes for use in presentations
  • share with other members of the University for academic purposes

To make sure that you can use BoB effectively, check out our Guide

The ABC of Evaluation

Here is a suggested set of questions to ask yourself when making an assessment of any published source of information, not just websites:

A - Authority

Who authored it, and what are his/her/their credentials?  In the case of a book, there may be something in the 'blurb' on the back cover about the author. In academic publications there are often notes about the author(s) and their qualifications and experience which enable them to speak authoritatively about their subject.  Are they affiliated to a university or a research institute?

Websites are often created by more than one person, but it is still important to check who the authors are.  See if there is an 'About Us' link giving information about the website, or the organisation and people maintaining it.  Are there any reliable contact details?  What are the stated aims of the organisation?

Does the book or website contain up-to-date references to source materials, particularly to original research or statistics, so that you can check whether the discussion or opinions are based on reliable facts?  Is it aimed at a popular audience, or is it more scholarly and reasoned in its approach?  What kind of language does it use: is it rhetorical or emotive, and does the author back up his/her/their arguments with appropriate facts and original sources?

B - Bias

Think about the possibility of any bias in the information you have found.  Is it possible that the organisation represented by the author or website has a particular standpoint to promote: is it a campaigning or pressure group, a government department, or public information service?

If the source is likely to have a bias, make sure you check any references or links provided, and find some other sources with a contrasting standpoint, preferably from an academic book or journal.  It is good practice to use a variety of sources of information so you can compare and contrast different viewpoints on a topic.

C - Currency

Check how up-to-date the information is.  A book or a journal will usually have a clear date of publication on its cover or title page. If it doesn't, check the date of the latest item in any bibliography at the end of the book or article.

In the case of a website, try to find the date when it was last updated.  In some subjects such as law or economics, the validity of information may change more rapidly than in others, so you will need to be careful.   Are any links from it to other sites still active?

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