Research tools

• Natural Resource Database Software (NRDB), by Richard Alexander
• Census and Survey Processing System (CSPro), by the US Census Bureau
• GAMS Software 
  Researchers with ongoing projects funded by PEP’s MPIA program should contact 
  info@pep-net.org for information on obtaining the PEP licence for GAMS at a subsidised rate.
• GAMS Mailing list
  To exchange information about GAMS

• List of Open Access Research Tools and Resources via IRDC

Sites with free downloadable papers

• SSRN: The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a publicly accessible site that gathers academic discussion papers and forthcoming publications (30,000 abstracts and 15,000 downloadable papers) from a huge number of first-rate economics departments and research centres (NEBR, CEPR, IZA, etc.). This is a great site to get the very latest research papers. As they are extremely recent, their bibliographies are excellent starting points for a literature survey. The search facility is straightforward. You can also subscribe to receive email updates on specific subject areas but there may be a fee for this.
• World bank eLibrary: The eLibrary houses nearly 8,000 books, reports, journals, and working papers, and also offers a number of useful research tools and features such as extensive browsing options (content type, topic, key word, series, and other metadata), search within search result; chapter-level abstracts and individual chapter download.
• REPEC: This sites groups together a number of search tools, including IDEAS, which includes roughly 130,000 articles and working papers, many of which can be downloaded, plus many software programs and add-ons. The site also includes WOPEC, which contains 36,000 downloadable papers.
• ELDIS: This site contains a search facility for obtaining documents, web sites and assorted information on development issues.
• NBER: The NBER publishes a huge working paper series (close to 9000 papers) in all fields of economics. Access is free for most developing countries upon written (email) request.
• List of other sources of free downloadable papers via Citationsy

Sites with downloadable articles for subscribers

• JSTOR: This site allows subscribers to download articles from 13 top economic journals (AER; Econometrica; JEL; JEP; Journal of Industrial Economics; Journal of Money, Credit and Banking; Journal of Political Economy; QJE; Review of Economic Studies; Review of Economics and Statistics) with a three- to five-year lag depending on the journal (i.e. you can download all publications before 1997 from the Review of Economics Studies).
• PROQUEST: This site provides subscribers access to summaries of articles from over 8000 publications, many of which can be downloaded.

Sites with free literature search tools

• Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
• Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network. It enables you to search academic readings, to share them with your fellow researchers and to create automatic bibliographies for your research papers. More information about Mendeley can be found in this video demo and guide.

Sites with literature search tools for subscribers

• ECONLIT: This is an excellent search tool for finding economics papers that covers almost all economics journals.
• Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI): This is also an excellent search tool for finding economics papers covering most economic journals. It has the added advantage of allowing searches by citations so that starting from a classic (oft-cited) paper, you can trace research forward to see who has done more recent research on the issue.

• Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP): www.pep-net.org (see "Call for Proposals")
• African Economic Research Network (AERC): www.aercafrica.org
• Global Development Network (GDN) Awards: http://www.gdn.int/awards
• AuthorAID (support, mentoring, resources & training for researchers in low- & middle-income countries to publish their work): www.authoraid.info 

• African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)
• Bureau for Economic Research and Development (BREAD, Harvard)
• Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE)
• Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales - Universidad Nacional de La Plata (CEDLAS)
• Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC)
• Développement et Insertion Internationale (DIAL)
• Ecomod: International network of modellers
• The ELDIS Gateway to Development Information (ELDIS)
• Global Development Network (GDN)
• Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP)
  GTAP's goal is to improve the quality of quantitative analysis of global economic issues within an economy-wide framework
• Impact Evaluation Network (IEN)
• International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
• International Child Development Centre (Innocenti ICDC-Unicef)
• International Poverty Centre (IPC)
• Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI)
• Southern African Regional Poverty Network (SARPN)  
• Poverty Reduction, Equity and Growth Network (PEGNet)
• PEP-GTAP South Asian Network of Economic Modelers (SANEM)
• World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER)

• About Economics
• Dr. T's EconLinks.com 
• INOMICS
• Home Pages of Economists with Interests in Applied Microeconomics and Development
• Resources for Economists on the Internet 
• "105 indispensable resources for online academic research" 
  This website, prepared by Ms. Leslie Hanson, presents a list of the 105 websites (and online resources) dedicated to academic research and higher education. The list includes a variety of academic search engines and journal databases, librairies and encyclopedias, as well as other scholarly resources (e.g. informative blogs covering academic journals, and overall articles) that "any aspiring PhD student would find useful".