Free Working Paper Access
Employees of NBER Corporate Associates
Employees of NBER’s corporate associates are entitled to free working paper downloads. To register for access, please email the following information to subs@nber.org:
- Institutional domain name, typically the last portion of an email address, such as 'ibm.com'.
- The network number for the institution, which can be obtained from a network administrator. This is not required for sites that implement reverse name look-up. Note that the network number is not the "network mask'', which is a number beginning with 255.
Testing
You should be in the database within 48 hours. Test w0000. If you are not offered a full text download in PDF format (select on "PDF'' below the abstract) please contact subs@nber.org.
Associates Without Regular Sites:
Some of our associates access the WWW via commercial ISPs which share host names and IP addresses with other institutions, or which do not provide consistent host names from one session to another.
Journalists
All users of the NBER website are entitled to three free downloads annually. Journalists must register to receive additional papers. Freelance journalists writing on economics and finance may also register for free downloads. The NBER does not provide free access to finance professionals with part-time journalistic sidelines, investment advisory services, or publishers of financial newsletters.
If the network for a journalist’s home office supports "reverse domain name lookup," then they will be able to download the papers directly once the NBER has registered and authorized your publication's domain name. In fact, one of your colleagues may have already registered your publication for access.
Please contact subs@nber.org if you require further assistance with this process and the Media page for other resources for journalists.
Government Employees in the United States
US government employees and residents of developing countries have free access to NBER Working Papers on the basis of domain name. U.S. government employees have a domain name ending in .gov. State government workers generally have a domain name like "state./state-postal-id/.us" but other domains may be added upon request. Residents of developing countries have a domain name ending in their two letter country code. NBER does not ask users in these countries to register or to obtain a password. Difficulty downloading working papers without charge sometimes arises if the NBER server does not recognize a user's domain name. To test free access, please browse this test document: w0000. Users from authorized domains should see a download button. Please contact subs@nber.org otherwise.
Eligible Countries
The NBER offers free working paper access to residents of countries where per capita GDP is less than $35,000 (2017) on this IMF listing of income by country.
If your computer is in one of the eligible countries you should be offered a full-text download on the bibliographic page for the paper. If that does not happen, select the "Information for subscribers and others expecting free downloads" link and you will be given the opportunity to submit your email address. You will then receive a URL for the paper if your email domain is in one of the eligible countries.
Questions about authorization may be directed to subs@nber.org.