Following New Economics Papers with RSS

The option to subscribe to REPEC’s NEP service is hidden but still available. This post provides a list of available rss feeds.

REPEC is an online database of economics papers, most of which are freely available to read. It is an incredible resource that is itself underrated by students of economics. But even more underrated is the associated New Economics Papers service that notifies subscribers as new papers are released.

There are over a hundred categories which can be followed. Each managed by an academic volunteer who selects relevant papers for distribution. It is the absolute easiest way to stay up to date on new research in economics.

The NEP page includes buttons to subscribe to an email list or Mastodon feed for each category but RSS, the objectively best option, is missing.¹

I knew that RSS feeds would be around somewhere and after a little search I finally found them under nep.repec.org/rss/. This page shows an Apache directory index with the RSS files. Unhelpfully they are only titled by ID but by cross-referencing with the main page I was able to generate this list of available feeds.

library("rvest")

# NEP listing for humans
nep <- read_html("https://nep.repec.org/")

# Select IDs and Categories
nep_categories <- nep |>
  html_elements(".nitpo_antem")

id_to_category <- tibble::tibble(
  ID = nep_categories |>
    html_element(".sbore_repcode") |>
    html_text2(),
  Category = nep_categories |>
    html_element(".derep") |>
    html_element(xpath = "a[contains(@href, 'latest')]") |>
    html_text2()
)

# Apache rss index
nep_rss <- read_html("https://nep.repec.org/rss/")

# Select IDs and RSS Feed Links
id_to_feed <- nep_rss |>
  html_element("table") |>
  html_table() |>
  dplyr::select(Name, `Last modified`) |>
  dplyr::mutate(
    ID = stringr::str_sub(Name, 1, stringr::str_locate(Name, "\\.")[, "end"] - 1),
    Feed = paste0("[", ID, "](https://nep.repec.org/rss/", ID, ".rss.xml)"),
    Dormant = lubridate::interval(
      lubridate::ymd_hm(`Last modified`),
      lubridate::today()
    ) / lubridate::years(1) > 1
  ) |>
  dplyr::filter(!Dormant) |>
  dplyr::select(ID, Feed)

# Combine Feed and Category
feed_and_category <- id_to_category |>
  dplyr::inner_join(id_to_feed, dplyr::join_by(ID)) |>
  dplyr::select(Feed, Category)

# Output
feed_and_category

Feed	Category
nep-acc	Accounting and Auditing
nep-afr	Africa
nep-age	Economics of Ageing
nep-agr	Agricultural Economics
nep-ain	Artificial Intelligence
nep-ara	MENA - Middle East and North Africa
nep-ban	Banking
nep-bec	Business Economics
nep-big	Big Data
nep-cba	Central Banking
nep-cbe	Cognitive and Behavioural Economics
nep-cdm	Collective Decision-Making
nep-cfn	Corporate Finance
nep-cis	Confederation of Independent States
nep-cmp	Computational Economics
nep-cna	China
nep-com	Industrial Competition
nep-cse	Economics of Strategic Management
nep-cta	Contract Theory and Applications
nep-cul	Cultural Economics
nep-dcm	Discrete Choice Models
nep-dem	Demographic Economics
nep-des	Economic Design
nep-dev	Development
nep-dge	Dynamic General Equilibrium
nep-ecm	Econometrics
nep-edu	Education
nep-eec	European Economics
nep-eff	Efficiency and Productivity
nep-ene	Energy Economics
nep-ent	Entrepreneurship
nep-env	Environmental Economics
nep-ets	Econometric Time Series
nep-eur	Microeconomic European Issues
nep-evo	Evolutionary Economics
nep-exp	Experimental Economics
nep-fdg	Financial Development and Growth
nep-fle	Financial Literacy and Education
nep-fmk	Financial Markets
nep-for	Forecasting
nep-gen	Gender
nep-geo	Economic Geography
nep-ger	German Papers
nep-gro	Economic Growth
nep-gth	Game Theory
nep-hap	Economics of Happiness
nep-hea	Health Economics
nep-his	Business, Economic and Financial History
nep-hme	Heterodox Microeconomics
nep-hpe	History and Philosophy of Economics
nep-hrm	Human Capital and Human Resource Management
nep-ict	Information and Communication Technologies
nep-ifn	International Finance
nep-ind	Industrial Organization
nep-ino	Innovation
nep-int	International Trade
nep-inv	Investment
nep-ipr	Intellectual Property Rights
nep-isf	Islamic Finance
nep-iue	Informal and Underground Economics
nep-knm	Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy
nep-lab	Labour Economics
nep-lam	Central and South America
nep-law	Law and Economics
nep-lma	Labor Markets - Supply, Demand, and Wages
nep-ltv	Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty
nep-mac	Macroeconomics
nep-mfd	Microfinance
nep-mic	Microeconomics
nep-mig	Economics of Human Migration
nep-mkt	Marketing
nep-mon	Monetary Economics
nep-mst	Market Microstructure
nep-net	Network Economics
nep-neu	Neuroeconomics
nep-nud	Nudge and Boosting
nep-opm	Open Economy Macroeconomics
nep-pay	Payment Systems and Financial Technology
nep-pbe	Public Economics
nep-pke	Post Keynesian Economics
nep-pol	Positive Political Economics
nep-ppm	Project, Program and Portfolio Management
nep-pub	Public Finance
nep-reg	Regulation
nep-res	Resource Economics
nep-rmg	Risk Management
nep-sbm	Small Business Management
nep-sea	South East Asia
nep-soc	Social Norms and Social Capital
nep-sog	Sociology of Economics
nep-spo	Sports and Economics
nep-tid	Technology and Industrial Dynamics
nep-tra	Transition Economics
nep-tre	Transport Economics
nep-tur	Tourism Economics
nep-upt	Utility Models and Prospect Theory
nep-ure	Urban and Real Estate Economics

Footnotes

1. It is mentioned on the page but there are no links.