Resources

Datasets

I always need and want more data.

If you just want to have more information about the world we live in, along with beautiful data visualizations, check out http://ourworldindata.org/

If you are looking for a social science dataset on a particular topic, a good starting point is ICPSR, a fantastic data repository and search engine.

Otherwise, here below is a random list of datasets that you can use for research projects. Some of them are public and free; some require an application; some need a fee $$$.

Panel Datasets

• US National Longitudinal Survey (NLSY and others): https://www.nlsinfo.org/

• US Health and Retirement Study (HRS): http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/index.php

• The Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) http://www.share-project.org/

• English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) https://www.elsa-project.ac.uk/ 

• Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) https://survey.keis.or.kr/eng/klosa/klosa01.jsp 

• Japanese Study on Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) https://www.rieti.go.jp/en/projects/jstar/

• Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) http://charls.pku.edu.cn/en

• Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) http://www.mhasweb.org/

• Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) https://www.rand.org/labor/FLS/IFLS.html

• The Irish Longitudinal Study on Aging (TILDA)  https://tilda.tcd.ie/

• Study on Global Aging (SAGE) http://www.who.int/healthinfo/sage/en/

• Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI) https://lasi.hsph.harvard.edu/

• US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID): http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/default.aspx

• US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health): http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/documentation

• US Early Childhood Longitudinal Program (ECLS): http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/birthinstruments.asp 

• UK Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC): http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/

• LISS Panel Data (Netherlands): https://www.lissdata.nl/lissdata/

• Bilanci delle Famiglie Italiane/Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW): http://www.bancaditalia.it/statistiche/tematiche/indagini-famiglie-imprese/bilanci-famiglie/index.html

• German Socio-Economic Panel Study (G-SOEP): http://panel.gsoep.de/

• Integrate Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS): https://international.ipums.org/international/

• European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC): http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/microdata/european-union-statistics-on-income-and-living-conditions 

• European Social Survey (ESS): http://essedunet.nsd.uib.no/ 

• Demographic and Health Survey, 90 countries (DHS) http://dhsprogram.com/

• Performance Monitoring for Action, 9 African and Asian countries (PMA) https://www.pmadata.org/ 

• Young Lives http://www.younglives.org.uk/

• China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) http://www.isss.pku.edu.cn/cfps/EN/

• National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Longitudinal Study https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes-ls/index.htm

• National Immunization Survey https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/nis/about.html 

• Swiss National Cohort https://www.swissnationalcohort.ch/

Having trouble with your panel dataset? Check out panelwhiz

Social Science Genetics Datasets

• UK Biobank https://biobank.ndph.ox.ac.uk/showcase/

• US Health and Retirement Study (HRS): http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/index.php 

• English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) https://www.elsa-project.ac.uk/ 

• US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID): http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/default.aspx 

• US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health): http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/documentation 

• UK Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC): http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/

• Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP)

• LifeLines https://www.lifelines.nl/researcher

• Understanding Society (UKHLS) https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/

• National Child Development Study (NCDS) https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/cls-studies/1958-national-child-development-study-2/

• Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/cls-studies/millennium-cohort-study/ 

• Estonian Biobank https://genomics.ut.ee/en/content/estonian-biobank 

• BBMRI (THL) Finnish Biobank

• TwinksUK https://twinsuk.ac.uk/ 

• The German Twin Family Panel (TwinLife) https://www.twin-life.de/ 

• Generation Scotland https://www.ed.ac.uk/generation-scotland 

• iPSYCH The Lundbeck Foundation Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research https://ipsych.dk/en 

• Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) https://www.fhi.no/en/ch/studies/moba/ 

Other lists of datasets, public and less public

• Global Health Data Exchange https://ghdx.healthdata.org/ 

• (German) Panel Data https://paneldata.org/ 

• US Natality and Mortality Data (county-level) http://doi.org/10.3886/E100229V4

• A guide to regional data in Europe https://github.com/sumtxt/regionaldata-guide-eu/?s=08

• Labor Force Surveys (LFO) http://www.ilo.org/dyn/lfsurvey/lfsurvey.list

• OECD Statistics https://stats.oecd.org/ 

  • e.g. OECD Health Statistics https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=HEALTH_STAT 

• US Census http://census.gov/ 

• US National Center for Health Statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/tools/index.htm 

• European Health Interview Survey https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/microdata/european-health-interview-survey 

• Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR): http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/

• UK Data Archive http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/

• Italy ISTAT: http://dati.istat.it/

  • e.g. regional dataset on health https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/18204#statosalute 

• Microdata from ISTAT https://www.istat.it/it/dati-analisi-e-prodotti/microdati#MFR 

  • An interesting one is the "indagine multiscopo". To get access to the microdata for research purposes, one needs to sign up and send an application to the contact center but the verification process is streamlined only for Italian residents with a digital ID (SPID). 

• SELFY (Sexual and Emotional Life of Youths) in Italian Universities 2017-2018 https://datarepository.stat.unipd.it/item/11 

• Programma Nazionale Esiti (PNE) https://pne.agenas.it/home 

• NBER datasets: http://www.nber.org/data/

• fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti (fRDB Data): http://www.frdb.org/page/data

• IDSC Labor Market Data (IZA): http://metadata.iza.org/home.php

• Wage Indicator: global data on wages, income and prices as well as on labour laws and collective agreements https://glabor.org/wp/platform/wageindicator/

• FORS, Swiss Center of Expertise in the Social Sciences http://forscenter.ch/en/our-surveys/ 

• Data from developing countries: http://ipl.econ.duke.edu/dthomas/dev_data/

• Dataset for development economists: http://devecondata.blogspot.ch/

• UK publicly available governmental data https://data.gov.uk/

• Chinese Micro Survey Data https://sites.google.com/view/leileitilburg/resources 

• Health Statistics Canada https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/health 

• Open Government Data portal for the city of Zürich, Switzerland. https://data.stadt-zuerich.ch/

• http://dataportals.org/

• http://bigdata-madesimple.com/70-websites-to-get-large-data-repositories-for-free/

• https://blog.bigml.com/list-of-public-data-sources-fit-for-machine-learning/

• https://github.com/caesar0301/awesome-public-datasets

• https://r-dir.com/reference/datasets.html

• Google books: https://books.google.com/ngrams

• Open Data Census http://census.okfn.org/ 

• World Management Survey http://worldmanagementsurvey.org/

• Kaggle dataset https://www.kaggle.com/datasets 

• Findex dataset http://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/global-findex (The Global Findex database is the world’s most comprehensive data set on how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk)

• Socioeconomic High-resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Platform for India (SHRUG) http://www.devdatalab.org/shrug_download/

• Global Health Data Exchange https://ghdx.healthdata.org/ (catalog of world's surveys, censuses, vital statistics, and other health-related data)

• Google dataset search  

Shoot me an email if you have some interesting links.

Tips for econs and PhDs

General resources and suggestions for economic researchers

• AEA suggestions on preparing for graduate school (for current PhD, see the section on "understanding the job market")

• Advice for PhD students in Economics (compiled by Roth and Schindler)

• Tips 4 economists, by Masayuki Kudamatsu

• Guidebook for PhD students in economics and education.

• Writing, presentation, and refereeing advice, compiled by Amanda Agan

• Resources and advice for PhD students, by Michele Tertilt

• Resources (economics of crime, lit reviews, and twitter threads), by Jennifer Doleac

• Resources and tips-for-phd-students by Claes Bäckman

• Modest advice for new grad students, by Dorsa Amir.

• Doing Research by Paul Nielhaus

• How to publish in top journals by Kwan Choi

  • General Publication Strategies

  • Writing Strategies

  • Preparation and Submission

  • Rejection and Revision

  • Being a Good Referee

• Tips for Applied Micro RAs : living document here 

• Some suggestions from Twitter here and here

• Job Market:

  • A guide and advice for economists on the US junior academic job market, by John Cawley

  • A guide for European Job Market Candidates, by the European Economic Association

  • Job Market Resources, complied by Johannes Pfeifer

  • Job Market Material by Kelsi Hobbes 

  • Slides on non-academic job market search in Europe, by Matteo Greco

Mental Health

• Peace for PhD students

• Suggestions on how to protect your mental health, compiled by Frank Schilbach

• A paper on "Graduate students mental health: Lessons from American Economic Departments"

• A companion working paper on "The State of Mental Health in European Economics Departments"

Writing

• Book: Economic Writing, Deirde McCloskey

• Book: How to write a [bachelor / master] thesis, Umberto Eco

• Video: The craft of writing effectively

• Slides: How to give an applied micro talk, Jesse Shapiro

• Writing an undergraduate thesis,  Alex Albright

• Website: www.econscribe.org/ 

Programming

• Stata Coding Guide by Julian Rief (video from the hidden curriculum)

• Paper: Code and data for the social sciences: a practitioner's guide, Matt Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro

• Coding for Economists

What I used to teach

Program Evaluation and Causal Inference

This master course provides an introduction to recent advances in the methods used for the evaluation of programs and policies, with a focus on causal inference and estimation of treatment effects. Link to the syllabus. 

Early Childhood Investments

Here are some slides about returns to investments in early childhood.

Social Genetics for Economists

Here are some slides about genoeconomics.