"Let your interests and passions guide you in choosing the questions you ask, but keep those passions out of the answers you form."

--Richard Musgrave

Videos by Joshua Angrist on "Mastering Econometrics"

Free online textbook: Scott Cunningham, Causal Inference: The Mixtape.

Free online textbook: Nick Huntington-Klein, The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality.

Sources for economic data

• IPUMS, easy-to-use site for getting cross-section micro (person- or household-level) data from the Current Population Survey, the Decennial Census, the American Community Survey, and many other surveys.
• FRED, easy-to-use site for getting time-series macroeconomic data.
• Links compiled by Bill Goffe for American Economic Association.
• Links compiled by Bill Boal (mostly U.S. Federal Government sources).
• Google data set search engine (beta version).
• Harvard Dataverse (repository).
• World Bank Data Catalog (repository).
• Data.gov, catalog of thousands of U.S. government data sets

Stata resources

• Official site (available versions and pricing).
• UCLA site (FAQs and examples).
• Links suggested by Prof. Colin Cameron, University of California, Davis, author with Pravin Trevedi of Microeconometrics, a graduate textbook, and Microeconometrics Using Stata.

SAS resources

• Basics of SAS (handout)

R resources

• R Project homepage (download R)
• Posit (download R Studio, a popular interface for R)
• R for Data Science by Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund (free online book)
• Using R for Introductory Econometrics by Forian Heiss (free online book designed to follow Jeffrey Wooldridge's textbook)
• r-econometrics by Franz X. Mohr (concise explanations with examples)

Whitney Hanson (2017) How Does Immigration Relate to Different Measures of Crime in the United States? Drake Undergraduate Social Science Journal, Spring 2017.

Ryan McKeever (2017) Measuring Human Development in the United States, Drake Undergraduate Social Science Journal, Spring 2017.

Noah Bamonte-Grebis (2020) Cash Transfers and Individual Labor, Drake Undergraduate Social Science Journal, Spring 2020.

Abigail Cornett (2020) The Winds of Change: How Wind Energy Impacts Local Economies in Iowa, Drake Management Review, Vol. 10, Issue 1, October 2020.

Haley Dietz (2020) Behavioral Economics and the Demand for Insurance, Drake Management Review, Vol. 10, Issue 1, October 2020.

Tate Clemen (2021) Impact of Total Per Student School Expenditure on Intergenerational Upward Mobility Drake Management Review, Vol. 11, Issue 1/2, October 2021.

Bryan Schlotterbeck (2022) Food stamps: The Impact on Consumer Expenditure Behavior, Drake Management Review, Vol. 12, Issue 1, October 2022.

Ben Curtis (2024) Running the Numbers: The Effect of Age on Performance in Elite Distance Runners, SportRxiv, Posted 2024-06-06.

Silvester Tan (2024) Minimum Wages and Employment: Effects of Rising Minimum Wages on Employment of Young Workers in Washington State, Drake Management Review, Vol. 14, Issue 2, October 2024.

Corinne Sidebottom (2024) The Impact of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour on County Retail Sales, Drake Management Review, Vol. 14, Issue 2, October 2024.

Lauren Buchanan (2025) The Indirect Impact of Medicaid Expansion on SNAP Participation, Drake Undergraduate Social Science Journal, Spring 2025.

Stella Depuydt (2025) Effects of Income and Government Assistance on Rent Expenditures, Drake Undergraduate Social Science Journal, Spring 2025.

If you have written a good paper, don't just keep it to yourself! Submit it to one of the following and add a line to your resume.

On-campus outlets for student economics research

• Drake Undergraduate Social Science Journal.
• Drake University Conference on Undergraduate Research in the Sciences (DUCURS).
• Nelson Student Research Symposia for papers on international topics.

Off-campus outlets for student economics research

• American Economic Association page, a list of journals and conferences that welcome undergraduate research.
• Student Monthly Labor Review, sponsored by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: factsheet, submission form.
• Jepson Undergraduate Research Conference on International Economics at University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls. The conference usually takes place in April. Paper submissions are usually due at the end of February. For more information, contact Professor Shahina Amin.
• Midwest Economics Association Annual Conference. The conference usually takes place in March, and includes several sessions for undergraduate research. Undergraduate paper submissions are usually due December 1--see the website for details.
• Michigan Journal of Business, an undergraduate-run academic business journal.