Research Guides: *Business: Working Papers

How to Find Working Papers

Working papers are helpful when you look for the most recent research on a topic, and is one of the most common sources in finance and economics literature.

Some working papers are intended to be included in scholarly journals, and later become available through searching business article databases such as ABI/INFORM or Business Source Complete, but others, especially that are published by government bodies are available as a series of working papers.

A working paper is often a brief summary or preliminary report of original research.

You can find the working papers from:
1. the author's website
2. institutional repositories (e.g., Harvard Business School Working Papers )
3. government bodies (e.g., National Bureau of Economic Research)
4. subject repositories (e.g., SSRN), or
5. search engines like Google or Google Scholar

Sources for Working Papers

NBER Working Papers This link opens in a new window
NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) Working Papers is the full text collection of U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research working papers written by its researchers on a range of economics topics. Presents papers on economic issues ranging from corporate finance, industrial organization and taxation to monetary economics, international finance and macroeconomics.
Abbreviation: nberwp
Vendor: National Bureau of Economic Research
Coverage: 1998Current
Subjects: Business, Economics
Type: Datasets / Statistics, E-Book Collections

SSRN (Social Science Research Network)
"A world wide collaborative of over 252,000 authors and more than 1.7 million users that is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences." A free registration is required for download.
RePEc:IDEAS
A world wide collaborative effort to disseminate economic research. Has a collection of over 1.5 million items of working papers, journal articles and software in economics.
Working Papers and Technical Reports in Business, Economics and Law
From Library of Congress. A collection of print copies of grey literature in business, economics and law, published by foreign academic and research institutions.

EconLit This link opens in a new window
Indexes and provides citations and abstracts from over 600 major journals as well as articles in collective volumes (essays, proceedings, etc.), books, book reviews, dissertations, and working papers licensed from the Cambridge University Press Abstracts of Working Papers in Economics. Coverage includes urban, rural and regional economics, public finance, international economics, banking, labor economics, country studies, economic history, demography, law & economics, industry studies, government regulations, business, economic development, cultural economics, agricultural and natural resources economics, and health, education and welfare economics. Most records since 1987 include an abstract. EconLit uses the Journal of Economic Literature Classification system as Subject Descriptors.
Abbreviation: econlit
Vendor: EBSCO
Coverage: 1886-Current
Subjects: Economics, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: Indexes / Catalogs