Library & Cultural Services: Economics: Organisations & Websites: Policy & Research Reports

International Agencies

International Monetary Fund
Created in 1945 (HQ in Washington DC), nearly all countries are members. Mission to ensure global financial & economic stability. From 1 January 2020 the IMF offers free access to its publications portal - IMF eLibrary. See all the Essential Reading section on key topics
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Created in 1961 & based in Paris, the OECD comprises 36 countries (mostly economically developed). A forum for governments to develop policies that benefit their populations. Some freely available publications & data, the Library also subscribes to the OECDiLibrary database
World Bank
Established 1944, based in New York, and internationally funded to provide financial & technical assistance to developing countries. Extensive data and publications available
World Economic Forum
Influential organisation, bringing together business, policy makers & others since 1971, in an effort to shape the economic agenda

Think Tanks. Policy Research

The research & publications of reputable think tanks, NGOs, and policy organisations, is often an important complement to academic literature (books and journal articles), especially for research topics that have policy dimensions.

Particularly useful are the main portals to the output of these organisations: Overton Policy Documents; Harvard Think Tank Search; Policy Commons

The Brookings Institution
Major independent think tank. Full text of many reports available.
Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
Leading UK economics research institute publishing highly regarded working papers series, and blogs VoxEU and VoxDev
Harvard Kennedy School Think Tank Search
Powerful but basic tool, searches across 1200 US & international think tanks for publications & more
Institute for Social & Economic Research (ISER) University of Essex
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Premier US economics research institute with highly regarded working paper series

Overton Policy Documents database
Overton is a portal enabling detailed searches for policy documents. Its a huge database with records for nearly 6 million documents & links to the full text. It also identifies academic contributions to policy-related research, so can be used to demonstrate impact of academic publications.

Peterson Institute for International Economics
(formerly the Institute for International Economics)
Policy Commons
Portal offering curated access to documents from over 20 000 policy organisations (IGOs and NGOs) from around the world. Good coverage of Africa, and improving for Asia

Other Organisations & Web Resources

CORE
Growing community of academics & students developing engaging introductory level e-books and online resources for teaching real world economics
Economics Network of the Higher Education Academy
Free resources for UK university teachers of economics.
Resources for Economists on the Internet (RFE)
Sponsored by the American Economic Association, a well organised list of resources arranged by subject.