Federal Reserve Bank publications

Increasingly, I am convinced that some of the most overlooked sites for research on the political economy (whether the domestic political economy of the U.S. or the international political economy) are the 12 sites of the branches of the Federal Reserve Bank. (There is a permanent link on the right-hand side to a page that will show the districts and allow you to navigate to the sites of any of the branches. I will reproduce the link here.)

Each of the 12 banks (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, St. Louis, and San Francisco) has its own research and publications department, staffed by its own in-house economists. The offerings include "working papers", full-on journals, data sources, and other reports. One important niche this fills is that the works are often "serious" and sophisticated, but are not always purely designed for economists. Some of them have equations and a high degree of technical knowledge required, but in many cases you can still get the essence of an article by skimming this a bit. As importantly, these are very timely. Academic journal articles may take several years in the writing, peer review, revision, editing, and eventual publication. The Fed branches seem to be able to produce good material on a shorter time cycle, as their scholars have internal access to tons of data, and probably more ease in moving from writing to publication.

An example of a posting that will make you think about on issue - the subprime mortgage phenomenon and the economic crisis - would be this posting by a researcher at the Cleveland Fed: Ten Myths about Subprime Mortgages. I am not recommending this post for its specific content, with which I partly agree and partly do not, but rather as part of a general observation: for contemporary treatments of the political economy of 2007-2009, consider these a likely source for up-to-date material -- probably moreso than JStor, Project Muse, and the like.

Have some patience, look at the different sites, find the publications section for each, and do some searches when the time comes to write your papers. You will likely find something useful.