The history and scope of the American Economic Association’sEconLit and theEconomic Literature Index

This paper discusses the coverage and history of the American Economic Association's electronic bibliographic databases,EconLit andEconomic Literature Index. The author briefly traces the origins of the discipline of economics and discusses the history and early print bibliographies of the association, which were later expanded into electronic media with the creation of theEconomic Literature Index andEconLit. Tables show the subject and geographic scope, as well as the coverage dates and number of records, for the different document types contained in bothEconLit and theEconomic Literature Index.