BFIN 495: Finance Senior Thesis (Spring 2009)

Getting started: generate ideas / select a topic

In addition to using sources familiar to you (textbooks, WSJ, etc.), consider browsing other resources for ideas about recent trends in finance and financial research. Some examples:

NYU Stern School: Finance Department / Salomon Center:

http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/finance/

http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/salomon/

Knowledge@Wharton / Knowledge@Emory:

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/

http://knowledge.emory.edu/

HBS Working Knowledge:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/

Federal Reserve Board: Finance working papers / discussion series:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/workingpapers.htm

Find data to support your research

As you work on choosing a topic that’s appropriate for your senior thesis, be sure that you can get the data that you’ll need to perform your analysis.

Bloomberg

For assistance using the Bloomberg terminal in the School of Business to find information, tutorials are available from the libraries at Boston College:

http://www.bu.edu/library/management/tutorials/bbmainpage.html

and Columbia University:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/business/guides/bloomberg.html

Fama and French Data Library (Dartmouth):

http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/ken.french/data_library.html

Find U.S. statistics – economic, demographic, and other

Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) – Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/

U.S. Census data access tools:

http://www.census.gov/main/www/access.html

FedStats – Statistics from U.S. Federal agencies:

http://www.fedstats.gov/

University of Michigan Documents Center – Statistical Resources on the Web:

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html

Find international statistics

IMF – International Financial Statistics (IFS) (statistics only – no text)

http://www.tcnj.edu/~library/research/name/imfstatistics.html

Change the retrieval period first!

Follow steps to select series and display results (in HTML, Excel, CSV)

For explanation of statistical series – as well as symbols, codes, and abbreviations – use in tandem with print version (in Library – Current Periodicals section)