Economic History

Business History

This is a brief guide to primary and scholarly resources related to economic history for students and faculty at Boston College.

Researching Business Information and Industry Reports

This page provides an introduction to finding historical business information and financial reports. The majority of the information here is for the US and Europe, although some databases and datasets provide additional global coverage.

What's on This Page

This page has a lot on it. You can use the following anchors (links down the page) to jump straight to a relevant box.

Reference Shelf

Encyclopedia of American Industries
Call Number: Gale ebooks
Publication Date: 2018
Information on a wide range of industries in every realm of American business. It covers manufacturing, agriculture, mining, utilities, construction, wholesale, retail, transportation, information, finance, insurance, real estate, public administration, and service industries. Classified by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), this edition includes an essay for every one of the 1,057 2017 NAICS codes.

Broad Digital Collections

Business Source Complete
Contains articles from scholarly journals and business periodicals, also company, industry and market research reports. Includes coverage from across the 20th and into the 21st century.
HathiTrust
A digital repository for the nation's research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions, a significant portion of which is in the public domain and available full text. Includes government and industry documents, statistical collections, and more. Coverage strongest between the 17th and 20th centuries.
Nexis Uni
Nexis Uni includes thousands of U.S. and non-U.S. news sources; legal materials: case law, statutes and law reviews; and company/business information. Strength from 1990 to the present. Nexis Uni replaces Lexis-Nexis Academic.

Business Information, Profiles, and Industry Reports

Orbis Europe
A database of comparable financial information for very large public and private companies across Europe. Best for contemporary information.

Markets Data Center
This free site contains popular tables from the Wall Street Journal including:stocks, bonds, commodities & futures, and currencies For many of the tables there is an archive of past editions. Best for the recent past.
Edgar Database
The Security & Exchange Commission's database, EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval), provides free access to 10-Ks, 10-Qs, proxies, prospectuses and other documents.

Factiva
Includes newspapers (i.e. the Wall Street Journal), magazines, journals, company and industry information. Many publications available from 1980 to the present. See the Factiva User Guide for tips on searching. Downloading of the content for analytics/text mining is against the terms of the agreement.
Mergent Intellect
Provides access to private and public U.S. and international company data and industry profiles. Mergent Online will log off after 15 minutes of no activity. If you experience time-out issues, please log-in using EagleVPN.
Mergent Online
Includes company financials, executives, competitors, supply chain, equity, SEC filings, and more. Also, has industry and analysts reports. Mergent Online will log off after 15 minutes of no activity. If you experience time-out issues, please log-in using EagleVPN.

Industry Reports

Business Source Complete
Contains articles from scholarly journals and business periodicals, also company, industry, market research reports, and cases.
Hospitality & Tourism Complete
Includes periodicals, books and company & country reports on tourism from 1930 to the present.
IBISWorld
Market research reports covering thousands of industries in the United States at the national and state level, in China and worldwide. Also includes Business Environment Profiles.
MarketResearch.com
Includes reports from several market research firms covering service industries, consumer goods, demographics, food and beverage, heavy industry, life science, public sector and technology and media.
For academic use only.
Mintel Reports
Mintel provides market research reports covering the US. Reports cover a variety of sectors including consumer goods, travel and tourism, financial industry, internet industry, retail, food & drink, transportation and finance. The focus of the reports is on market size & trends, market segmentation, supply structure, advertising and promotion, retail distribution, consumer characteristics, and market forecasts.
For academic use only.

Company Histories

Corporate Reports Online (U of Penn)
A selection of historic company reports starting in the mid-1800s and going to 1975.
Open Access from the University of Pennsylvania.
Directory of Corporate Archives in the United States and Canada (SAA)
Originally Prepared in 1997 and Revised May 14, 2018. "This includes companies that maintain their historical records themselves, as well as companies that contract with historical consulting firms to maintain their archives collections for them, and libraries that contain business records."
Columbia Historical Corporate Reports
In 2007 a project was undertaken to digitize a selection of corporate reports from the Columbia Business Library's extensive collection of historical corporate annual reports.
Open Access by the Columbia University Libraries, leads out to the Internet Archive.
Business Records in WorldCat
Selected corporate archives may be identified by searching on the Company Name as a Keyword, Subject, or Author; Libraries Worldwide as the Library; and Archival Material as the Format.
Note users will usually need to order the material through ILL.

Data & Statistics

EH Databases
Interface and content in English.
"EH.Net provides an on-line location for researchers in economic history to make their data series available to other professionals and interested scholars. Several data series have been given to EH.Net and are available as downloadable files, while many other titles may be accessed through our Database Directory."
Open Access.
Measuring Worth
Interface and content in English.
"There are two missions of this site. The first is to make available to the public the highest quality and most reliable historical data on important economic aggregates, with particular emphasis on nominal (current-price) measures, as well as real (constant-price) measures. The data presented here on the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, have been created using the highest standards of the fields of economics and history, and they were rigorously refereed by the most distinguished researchers in the fields. The second is to provide carefully designed comparators (using these data) that explain the many issues involved in making value comparisons over time."
Open Access.

Statista
Provides quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and more.
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (previously World Bank eLibrary)
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository offers quick and easy access to the complete collection of World Bank publications since the 1990s. The World Bank is the worlds largest source of development assistance. In support of its missionto end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperitythe World Bank conducts and publishes research on a broad range of global and regional issues affecting developing countries.

U.S. Government Sources

Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
U.S. economic data collected by the BEA.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
This site provides a number of links that may be useful to educationists.
Data.gov
U.S. government open data portal. Search by topic.
Federal Reserve Data Releases
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Statistics
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Reports
Small Business Administration
U.S. Census Business & Industry Portal
U.S. Government Data and Statistics Portal

Global and Regional

Global Insight
Global Insight/DRI Standard and Poor's Database contains United States macroeconomic time series from the financial, manufacturing, and government sectors. Global Insight/DRI Basic Economics contains annual, quarterly, and monthly data on over 6,100 time series, some going back to 1946.
OECD
Includes key OECD publications such as: Financial Market Trends, Higher Education Management and Policy, Nuclear Law Bulletin, OECD Economic Outlook, OECD Economic Studies, OECD Economic Surveys, OECD Journal of Competition Law & Policy, and OECD Papers. Also includes books by theme, containing monographs and annual reports, on 20 topics: agriculture & food; development; education & skills; emerging economies; employment; energy; enterprise, industry & trade; environment & sustainable development; finance & investment; general economics & future studies; governance; international development; nuclear energy; science & information technology; social issues & migration; statistics sources & methods; taxation; territorial economy; transition economics; transport.
ProQuest Statistical Insight Complete Collection
Index to local, national and international intergovernmental statistical publications from 1983 to the present. Includes citation information with large number of pdf or spreadsheet downloads available.
World Bank - Documents and Reports
Documents and Reports is a collection of more than 27,000 World Bank operational documents and working papers.
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (previously World Bank eLibrary)
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository offers quick and easy access to the complete collection of World Bank publications since the 1990s. The World Bank is the worlds largest source of development assistance. In support of its missionto end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperitythe World Bank conducts and publishes research on a broad range of global and regional issues affecting developing countries.

World Development Indicators
Includes 600 indicators in 83 tables, arranged in six sections: world view, people, environment, economy, states and markets, and global links. The tables cover 148 economies and 14 country groups with basic indicators for a further 62 economies.

For access to additional datasets, visit out Historical Data & Statistics page.

News

Access World News
Access World News is a collection of local, regional, and international news sources. Additionally it provides access to many sources of foreign news in translation. Includes Business Insider (2009+), and more.
Factiva
Includes newspapers (i.e. the Wall Street Journal), magazines, journals, company and industry information. Many publications available from 1980 to the present. See the Factiva User Guide for tips on searching. Downloading of the content for analytics/text mining is against the terms of the agreement.
Nexis Uni
Nexis Uni includes thousands of U.S. and non-U.S. news sources; legal materials: case law, statutes and law reviews; and company/business information. Strength from 1990 to the present. Nexis Uni replaces Lexis-Nexis Academic.

Individual Titles

The Economist
Call Number: GALE or Publisher
Publication Date: 1843-present

For historical newspapers and television, visit BC Libraries' Historical News page.

Not-for-profits

Comparitive Nonprofit Sector Project
The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project analyzes the scope, structure, financing, and role of the private nonprofit sector in a cross-section of countries around the world. Covers 41 countries.
Foundation Center 990 Finder
You can quickly enter your company name and pull up the 990
Guidestar.org
Form 990 and other information on nonprofits such as organizational statistics, a summary of organization goals and activities, list of board members and executives.
Internal Revenue Services: Tax Exempt Statistics.
For each of these areas, there are statistical tables and text articles that include both recent and historical data.
National Center for Charitable Statistics
Includes a wide array of tables on U.S. nonprofits including public charities, private foundations, business leagues, trade unions, and others. The State Profiles section offers a range of tables broken out by state

For Additional Help

For additional recommendations, contact your History Liaison, Erin, at erinkate.scheopner@bc.edu or schedule an appointment.

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Economic History

Business History

Researching Business Information and Industry Reports

What's on This Page

Reference Shelf

Broad Digital Collections

Business Information, Profiles, and Industry Reports

Industry Reports

Company Histories

Data & Statistics

U.S. Government Sources

Global and Regional

News

Individual Titles

Not-for-profits

For Additional Help