Awesome AI for Economists

A curated list of AI tools, libraries, and resources transforming how economists conduct research, teach, and analyze policy — from natural language data access to causal machine learning.

Scope: Tools with specific value for economists. General-purpose AI assistants are in the Appendix.

Highlights

This list is maintained by the OpenEcon team — building open-source infrastructure connecting AI to economics.

• OpenEcon Data — Query 330,000+ economic indicators from FRED, World Bank, IMF, and 10+ sources in plain English. Available as web app, Python API, and MCP server.
• Stata-MCP — Run Stata from VS Code, Cursor, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot with real-time output, data viewer, and graph display.
• Econ Writing Skill — AI agent skill for writing economics papers, synthesizing 50+ guides by Cochrane, McCloskey, Shapiro, Head, and other leading economists.

Contents

• MCP Servers for Economic Data
• Coding Tools for Economists
• Causal Inference and Econometrics
• Simulation, Forecasting and Macro Modeling
• Literature Review and Research Discovery
• Economic Data and Analysis
• Academic Writing and LaTeX
• Document Processing and OCR
• NLP and Sentiment for Economics
• Policy, Labor and Alternative Data
• Finance-Specific AI
• Data Collection Tools
• Papers and Books
• Courses, Conferences and Community
• Appendix: General-Purpose AI

MCP Servers for Economic Data

Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers let AI assistants query economic databases directly. Connect Claude, Cursor, or other MCP-compatible tools to live data from FRED, World Bank, IMF, and more.

• Alpha Vantage MCP - Official server for stocks, forex, commodities, and economic indicators.
• BLS MCP Server - Bureau of Labor Statistics data: CPI, unemployment, employment, and wages via BLS API.
• Census MCP Server - Natural language queries for U.S. Census demographic data.
• Eurostat MCP Server - Query Eurostat APIs for EU statistics with dataset search, filtering, and CSV export.
• Financial Datasets MCP - Stock market data including prices, financials, and SEC filings via MCP.
• FRED MCP Server - Access all 800,000+ FRED time series with date filtering and frequency adjustment.
• IMF Data MCP Server - WEO forecasts, balance of payments, and more from the IMF.
• Nasdaq Data Link MCP - Access Nasdaq/Quandl financial and economic datasets.
• OECD MCP Server - Access 5,000+ OECD statistical datasets via SDMX API with prompt templates.
• OpenEcon - Unified natural language interface to 330,000+ economic indicators across FRED, World Bank, IMF, Comtrade, StatsCan, Eurostat, BIS, and ExchangeRate-API. Available as web app, Python API, and MCP server. Supports CSV, JSON, DTA (Stata), and Python export.
• TAM MCP Server - One server, eight sources: Alpha Vantage, BLS, Census, FRED, IMF, Nasdaq, OECD, and World Bank.
• World Bank MCP Server - Query World Bank Open Data API for development indicators across countries.

Browse the MCP Registry to discover more servers.

Coding Tools for Economists

• Aider - AI pair programming in your terminal with git integration and 260+ LLM support.
• awesome-econ-ai-stuff - Reusable AI skills for economists (SKILL.md standard) covering Stata, Python, and LaTeX workflows.
• Cline - Autonomous coding agent for VS Code with Plan/Act modes, MCP integration, and 5M+ installs.
• Jupyter AI - Official JupyterLab extension with %%ai magic commands for code generation and explanation.
• Jupyter AI Agents - AI agents for JupyterLab with MCP integration for connecting notebooks to FRED, World Bank, and more.
• Marimo - Reactive Python notebook stored as pure .py files with built-in AI assistant.
• Positron IDE - Next-gen IDE from Posit (makers of RStudio) with native R and Python support and AI-powered data assistant.
• Stata-MCP - The most popular Stata-AI integration. Execute .do/.ado/.mata files from VS Code, Cursor, Claude Code, or GitHub Copilot with real-time output panels, built-in data viewer, graph display, and support for up to 100 concurrent sessions.

AI Agent Frameworks

Build automated research pipelines — from data collection to analysis to report generation.

• Agno - Open-source Python framework with memory, knowledge, and 100+ toolkits including MCP support.
• AutoGen - Microsoft's multi-agent conversation framework for complex research workflows.
• CrewAI - Role-based multi-agent systems for collaborative research workflows.
• DeerFlow - ByteDance's research SuperAgent for long-horizon tasks with sandboxed code execution.
• DSPy - Stanford framework for programmatic LLM optimization — "programming, not prompting."
• Google ADK - Google's modular multi-agent framework with MCP and A2A protocol support.
• GPT Researcher - Autonomous deep research agent producing cited reports from web sources.
• LangGraph - Stateful agent workflows with cyclic graphs; 6M+ monthly downloads.
• MetaGPT - Multi-agent framework simulating roles (PM, analyst, engineer) with structured SOPs.
• OpenAI Agents SDK - Lightweight production-ready multi-agent framework with handoffs and guardrails.
• Pydantic AI - Type-safe agent framework with structured input/output, ideal for working with economic data.
• smolagents - Hugging Face's minimalist agent library where agents write actions as Python code.

Causal Inference and Econometrics

Core Libraries

• awesome-causal-inference - The definitive causal inference resource list.
• causal-learn - Causal discovery algorithms (PC, FCI, GES) from the PyWhy ecosystem.
• CausalML - Uber's uplift modeling and causal inference with machine learning.
• CausalPy - Bayesian causal inference for quasi-experiments (DiD, synthetic control, RDD) powered by PyMC.
• DoubleML - Chernozhukov et al. (2018) Double/Debiased ML in Python and R.
• DoWhy - End-to-end causal inference: model, identify, estimate, refute.
• EconML - Microsoft/PyWhy library for heterogeneous treatment effects via Double ML and causal forests.
• grf - Generalized Random Forests for heterogeneous treatment effects (Athey, Tibshirani, Wager).

Frontier Tools

• CausalAgent - Multi-agent AI for end-to-end causal inference through conversation.
• CausalFM - Foundation models for causal inference; pre-trained models replace per-problem estimation (ICLR 2026).
• CausalMatch - ByteDance's causal matching engine at industrial scale.
• CImpact - Causal impact for time series with frequentist and Bayesian methods.
• contdid - DiD with continuous treatment, by Brantly Callaway.
• diff-diff - sklearn-style difference-in-differences library filling a critical gap in Python.
• DoubleLingo - Double ML with LLM-based nuisance models for causal inference on unstructured data.
• moderndid - GPU-accelerated modern DiD with staggered adoption and event studies.
• Salesforce CausalAI - Causal analysis for time series and tabular data.
• TexIV - Extract instrumental variables from text data using ML.

Simulation, Forecasting and Macro Modeling

Agent-Based Models and LLM Simulation

• BeforeIT.jl - Bank of Italy's agent-based macroeconomic model in Julia.
• EconAgent - LLM agents with personality traits simulating macroeconomic activities (ACL 2024).
• LLM-ABM Survey - Tsinghua's toolkit and survey for LLM agent-based modeling.
• LLM-Economist - Mechanism design with 3–1,000+ LLM agents for optimal taxation research.

Forecasting and Nowcasting

• Chronos - Amazon's pretrained time series models with Bolt variant for 250x speedup.
• Durbyn.jl - Julia port of R's forecast package.
• emerging-trajectories - LLM-based forecasting of political and economic events.
• Lag-Llama - First open-source foundation model for probabilistic time series forecasting.
• neuralforecast - Neural forecasting models (N-BEATS, NHITS, Transformers) for economic time series.
• Now-Casting.com - Real-time GDP nowcasts for major economies, updated as data releases occur.
• Project Spectrum - BIS/ECB/Bundesbank GenAI for inflation nowcasting, categorizing 34M+ products for CPI.
• statsforecast - Fast statistical forecasting for econometric time series.
• TimeGPT - Nixtla's foundation model for time series trained on 100B+ data points.
• TimesFM - Google's decoder-only time series foundation model pre-trained on 400B+ time points.
• uni2ts - Unified time series transformer models.

Game Theory and Mechanism Design

• Axelrod - Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma research with 200+ strategies and tournament simulations.
• Nashpy - Two-player game solver with support enumeration, vertex enumeration, and Lemke-Howson.
• pygambit - Comprehensive game theory computation for extensive and strategic form games with Python API.

DSGE and Structural Models

• Deep Learning for Dynamic Econ - Neural networks to solve DSGE models (course materials).
• gEconpy - DSGE toolkit in Python.
• MacroModelling.jl - Julia DSGE toolkit.
• OpenSourceEconomics - JAX-compatible DC-EGM, Kalman filters, and econ-project-templates.
• optimagic - Numerical optimization for economists (formerly estimagic).

Literature Review and Research Discovery

• alphaXiv - Line-by-line discussion on arXiv papers with AI-powered analysis.
• ASReview - Active learning for systematic reviews, reducing screening time by up to 95% (Nature Machine Intelligence).
• Connected Papers - Visual graphs of related papers from a seed paper.
• Consensus - Evidence meter categorizing findings as yes/no/mixed across 200M+ papers.
• Elicit - Research agents synthesizing up to 80 papers into structured briefs from 138M papers.
• Inciteful - Free citation network analysis using graph algorithms to find key papers and connections.
• Litmaps - Dynamic multi-seed citation mapping with monitored searches and daily alerts for new papers.
• OpenAlex - Fully open catalog of 477M+ scholarly works with free REST API and semantic search.
• OpenScholar - Retrieval-augmented LM for scientific literature synthesis across 45M+ papers (Nature 2026).
• PaperQA2 - RAG system achieving superhuman accuracy on scientific literature search tasks.
• ResearchRabbit - Citation network and semantic similarity discovery rebuilt with Litmaps.
• SciSpace - Deep review with iterative search and Zotero integration across 280M papers.
• Scite - Classifies 1.5B+ citations as supporting or contrasting with AI-driven research rankings.
• Semantic Scholar - AI-powered academic search with citation analysis, TLDR summaries, and free API across 220M+ papers.
• STORM - Stanford's LLM-powered system that researches topics and generates full reports with citations.
• Undermind - Autonomously reads hundreds of papers and produces structured reports with timelines and categories.

Economic Data and Analysis

AI Data Analysis Platforms

• Julius AI - Upload datasets and ask questions in natural language; returns charts, regressions, and reports.
• Microsoft Data Formulator - Describe charts in English and get publication-quality output with Python code.

Economic Data Sources

• OpenEcon Data - Query 330,000+ economic indicators from FRED, World Bank, IMF, Comtrade, StatsCan, Eurostat, BIS, and more in plain English. Export to CSV, JSON, DTA, or Python. Try it | GitHub | MCP Server
• fedfred - Modern Python client for the FRED API at scale.
• FRED API v2 - Bulk retrieval of all series in any release across 800,000+ time series.
• Global Macro Database - Most comprehensive open-source macro dataset: 241 countries, 1086–2024, 27 contemporary and 84 historical sources.
• Trading Economics API - 300,000+ indicators from 196 countries with Python and R packages.

Academic Writing and LaTeX

• Econ Writing Skill - Agent skill that transforms AI assistants into expert economics paper writers. Synthesizes 50+ guides by Cochrane, McCloskey, Shapiro, Head, Bellemare, Goldin, and other leading economists. Works with Claude Code and OpenAI Codex.
• OpenAI Prism - Free LaTeX workspace with citation management, Zotero sync, sketch-to-equation, and real-time collaboration.
• Overleaf AI Assist - LaTeX error fixing, table generation, and equation generation from prompts or images.
• Paperpal - Academic writing assistant on Overleaf, Google Docs, and Chrome.
• Refine.ink - AI referee generating peer-review-quality feedback on academic papers, piloting with top economics journals.
• Thesify - AI reviewer evaluating argumentation, methodology, and rigor.
• Typst - Modern LaTeX alternative with dramatically simpler syntax and sub-second compilation.
• Underleaf - Chrome extension for image-to-LaTeX and smart citation generation.
• Zotero PapersGPT - Zotero AI plugin supporting ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and more for PDF chat and summaries.

Document Processing and OCR

• Docling - IBM open-source document parser with 0.97 table recognition accuracy.
• Marker - PDF to Markdown/JSON at 122 pages/sec with multi-page table merging.
• Mathpix - Screenshot-to-LaTeX OCR for equations, tables, and diagrams with PDF-to-Overleaf conversion.
• MinerU - PDF, web, and e-book content extraction with OCR for 84 languages.
• OlmOCR - Allen AI's fully open-source OCR with SOTA accuracy on tables, equations, and handwriting.
• Mistral OCR 3 - $1–2 per 1,000 pages with support for cursive, complex tables, and low DPI.
• Transkribus - Handwritten historical document transcription with 140+ AI models in 100+ languages.

NLP and Sentiment for Economics

• CentralBankRoBERTa - Fine-tuned RoBERTa for sentiment classification in central bank communications.
• EconBERTa - World Bank DeBERTa trained on 9.4B tokens from 1.5M economics papers with NER.
• FinBERT - Fine-tuned BERT for financial sentiment, widely cited in economics and finance research.
• FinSentGPT - Fine-tuned ChatGPT for multilingual financial sentiment, tested on ECB Monetary Policy Decisions.
• FinVADER - VADER updated with financial lexicons.
• SentiBigNomics - Sentiment analysis designed for economic text with aspect-based and negation handling.

Policy, Labor and Alternative Data

Policy and Evidence Synthesis

• EUROMOD - EU tax-benefit microsimulation covering all 27 member states (open-source, EUPL-1.2).
• ImpactAI - World Bank DIME tool synthesizing RCT evidence with effect sizes across interventions.
• Meta-Mar - Free meta-analysis platform where AI reads PDFs and extracts quantitative outcomes.
• OpenFisca - Open-source microsimulation engine for computing taxes and benefits on population data.
• Plural Policy - AI bill summarizer with version comparison and momentum indicators across U.S. jurisdictions.
• PolicyEngine - Open-source U.S. tax-benefit microsimulation.
• Rayyan - AI screening for systematic reviews with 90% time reduction and PRISMA flowcharts.

Labor Market Data

• Lightcast - 2.5B job postings, 800M profiles, and 160+ countries with AI skills taxonomy.
• LinkedIn Economic Graph - Labor trends, skills migration, and talent matching data for academic researchers.
• Revelio Labs - 100M+ employment records with academic access via WRDS.

Spatial, Satellite and Alternative Data

• CARTO - AI agents that reason with spatial data via natural language.
• FlyPix AI - No-code custom AI models on satellite and drone imagery for economic measurement.
• Neudata - Alternative data intelligence cataloging thousands of non-traditional data sources.
• Stanford Satellite + AI - HDI for 61,530 municipalities from satellite imagery (Nature Communications, 2026).

Finance-Specific AI

• awesome-quant - Curated quantitative finance resources.
• Dexter - Autonomous financial research agent with task planning and real-time data.
• Fin-R1 - Financial reasoning LLM by Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
• FinGPT - Open-source financial LLMs for sentiment, forecasting, and reports.
• FinRobot - AI agent platform for financial analysis combining LLMs, RL, and quantitative methods.
• OpenBB - Open-source financial research platform with AI copilot and economic data integration.

Data Collection Tools

Web Scraping

• Crawl4AI - Open-source web crawler producing LLM-ready markdown for RAG and data pipelines.
• Firecrawl - Webpages to structured markdown with AI extraction endpoint.
• Kadoa - No-code AI extraction for financial and economic data.
• ScrapeGraphAI - LLM-powered scraping that adapts to website changes automatically.

Survey and Qualitative Research

• ATLAS.ti - AI-powered qualitative coding reducing manual effort by 90%.
• Anthropic Interviewer - AI-conducted adaptive qualitative interviews at scale across 159 countries.
• Conveo - AI video interviews with multimodal analysis at scale.
• Outset AI - Hundreds of AI-moderated interviews simultaneously in 40+ languages.
• TheySaid - AI-moderated surveys with conversational follow-ups.

Warning: Nature reports AI chatbots infiltrating online surveys. Implement detection for MTurk/Prolific studies.

Synthetic Data

• Gretel - Synthetic data with differential privacy. Open-source library.
• MOSTLY AI - High-fidelity synthetic datasets with GDPR/HIPAA compliance.
• SDV - Open-source synthetic data generation with CTGAN, CopulaGAN, and GaussianCopula models.

Papers and Books

Key Papers

Books

• Deep Learning for Economists - Melissa Dell, JEL 2025 with companion Jupyter notebooks.
• The Means of Prediction - Maximilian Kasy on how AI works and who benefits (UChicago Press, 2025).
• The Scaling Era - Dwarkesh Patel's oral history from Amodei, Hassabis, and Zuckerberg interviews.

Courses, Conferences and Community

Courses

• AI for Economists - Jesse Lastunen's prompt-focused templates.
• Data Analysis with AI v2.0 - Gabor Bekes, CEU Vienna (2026). 12-week course covering LLMs for IV, DiD, and simulations.
• EconDL - Melissa Dell's Jupyter notebooks for deep learning in economics.
• Economics of Transformative AI - Stanford course with slides and exercises.
• genaiforecon.org - Korinek's companion site with semi-annual updates on tools and techniques.
• ML and Causal Inference - Susan Athey, Stanford GSB.
• ML and Economics at Oxford - Maximilian Kasy's reading group.
• The Economics of AI - Korinek, UVA on Coursera.
• Using AI in Research and Teaching - Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Yale SOM.

Conferences (2025–2026)

• ESIF Economics and AI+ML - Econometric Society, Cornell, June 2026.
• IESE Economics of AI - Barcelona, February 2026.
• NBER AI and Economic Measurement - Stanford, May 2026.
• NBER Digital Economics and AI - Spring 2026.

Community

Newsletters: genaiforecon (Korinek) | Causal Inference (Cunningham) | Autonomous Econ (Wong) | One Useful Thing (Mollick)

Podcasts: Dwarkesh Podcast | Exponential View

People: Anton Korinek | Scott Cunningham | Erik Brynjolfsson | Antonio Mele | Melissa Dell | Sendhil Mullainathan

Institutions: NBER AI | Stanford DEL | OECD.AI | World Bank ImpactAI

Appendix: General-Purpose AI

Widely known tools listed for completeness with notes on what economists specifically value.

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Read the contribution guidelines first.