Guide to the Web for Economics
CHAPTER 1
How to Use this Guide
It is getting hard to find students who have not used
the Web in class. In a recent survey we conducted, for instance, we
found that over 75% of Southern Arkansas University students we
surveyed were using the Web for their assignments. Nearly as many
were using the Web for entertainment. But, the Web is so large that
using it is no simple task. This guide is designed to help economics
students find useful information easily. Think of this guide as a
time and labor saving device. We list nearly 500 URLs (uniform
resource locators) in the format of a typical general economics text.
The URLs in this guide are also listed alphabetically by chapter and
by a global index. This guide will not relieve users from having to
conduct searches, but it will provide starting points for real
learning in economics.
How to Use this Guide
This guide contains selected URLs in a wide variety of topics in
both macroeconomics and microeconomics. The easiest way to use the
guide is simply to go to the Contents, click on a chapter of
interest, and click the title or URL of any Web site to go directly
to that page. Each chapter has a further breakdown of topics,
clicking on any of those will reveal those URLs. Another way to use
the guide is to click on the alphabetical index for each chapter and
scan down the list. Finally, a global alphabetical index of all of
the URLs is provided.
We provide a Web page for errata, changes, and new addresses. To
access that Web page simply click on the link below:
http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/ERWWW/update.html
Site Descriptions
To assist users in quickly finding sites of interest, we list each
site in a standard fashion, each is described as follows:
- Title
- the title describes the site
- the title may not be the exact title found at the site
- the title is linked to the site
- Type
- six types of sites are identified
- list: a directory of links to other URLs
- publication: material from a published article or
book
- report: material compiled for a report
- table: information or data presented in tabular
or graphical form
- writing: unpublished text or other material
- bibliography: a description of writing and
publications
- Level
- three levels are used:
- basic
- intermediate
- advanced
- Length
- three lengths are used
- short
- the equivalent of 1-2 printed pages
- medium
- the equivalent of 3 printed pages
- long
- the equivalent of 4 or more printed pages
- Links
- yes
- the page has internal links, external links, or both
- no
- Graphics
- yes
- the page contains material such as graphs, photos,
diagrams, animations, or movies
- no
- the page contains no such material
- Other
- pdf
- the page contains a link to an Adobe portable document
format file
- search
- the page contains a link to an internal search, an
external search, or both
- Annotation
- each site contains an annotation or brief description of
its contents
- URL
- each site contains a linked URL
Below is an example of a site:
- Statistics
about Businesses
- Type: publication; Level: basic; Length: long; Links: yes; Graphics: yes; Other: pdf/search
- Site from the U.S. Census Bureau contains information and
statistics from the 1992 economic census, including aggregate
data for the number of firms, receipts, and number of employees
in each legal form of business organization.
- http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.html