Economics

This page explains what the subject economics covers, gives an overview of the material the British Library holds for this subject, and advice on how you can find and use it. It also gives details of current activities to develop the collections for this subject.

Covers all aspects of economics and econometrics, including, where appropriate, economic history.

Collection overview

The British Library's Economics collection is extensive and has particular strengths in English-language material about the economic conditions and history of particular countries; comparative studies; economic theory and research methods; and official publications and statistics. Most printed material is kept offsite and has to be ordered in advance of your visit; or ordered via our a Document Supply Service; but a selection of around 200 economics books and reports published in the last three years, and key economics journals published in the last 12 months, are available on the shelves in the London Social Sciences Reading Room.

Overall we have:

a comprehensive collection of UK material acquired through legal deposit, including report literature, working papers and conference papers
strong English-language collections from other countries, especially North America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent, Africa. East European collections are also strong, reflecting interest in the transition to capitalism. Latin-American collections in various languages are also strong. Asian-language material has been collected selectively
extensive journals coverage, with many journals in full text online plus indexing and abstracting databases - see the list of electronic resources for economics and economic policy available in our London Social Sciences Reading Room
extensive newspaper collections, print and online
a growing collection of electronic resources and useful websites. We also archive relevant websites as part of the UK Web Archiving Consortium
strong historic collections of national government documents worldwide, and statistical series – find out more about business and economic statistics. Our Social Sciences Reading Room is a European Documentation Centre
oral histories of various aspects of business and finance
papers of notable UK economists.

For regular updates about new literature on the minimum wage and pensions, please see Welfare Reform on the Web.

Finding aids

Explore the British Library to find details of books, reports, journal titles, newspapers, maps and many more parts of the Library’s collections.
Electronic resources for economics and economic policy available in the Social Sciences Reading Room.
Guide to business and economic statistics
Guide to the papers of notable UK economists held by the British Library, with details of archives held elsewhere
Topical bibliographies on subjects such as Globalisation and employment.

Social Sciences Enquiry team

For more help on using the Social Sciences collections, contact the Enquiry team at Social-sciences@bl.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7412 7894 from 10.00 - 20.00 Mon- Thurs or 10.00 - 17.00 Friday.

Current activities

British Library Content Strategy

We have refined our Content Strategy (i.e what we collect now and in future). Please see the content strategy pages on our website. These pages are organised by subject. Please remember that different aspects of a research theme may be described under more than one subject. A subject will also cover a variety of research themes, so even though your topic may not be specifically listed, it will likely be found under one of our headings.

If you have comments on the Library's content strategy, we would be pleased to hear from you.