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1. Nonquoted citation as part of a sentence:

According to Schama (1987), opium was also transported to the Netherlands, where it

was smoked with tobacco.

No footnote is required here. Readers can refer to the bibliography for all the publication

details of Schama’s 1987 work.

2. Nonquoted citation not part of a sentence:

In the discussion about the consumption of addictive goods, some distinctions are

relevant (Chaloupka 1991).

Again, no footnote is necessary. Note that there is no punctuation between the author and

the date and that both are in parentheses.

3. Multiple citations not part of a sentence:

Advocates of tort reform criticize the tort system for unpredictability (see Huber 1988;

Huber and Litan 1991).

Use semicolon to separate individual entries by different authors.

4. Citing multiple works by the same author:

Lucas (1984) and Lucas and Stokey (1983, 1987) consider cash-in-advance models in

which some goods can be purchased “on credit.”

Note that Lucas and Stokey is a different author than Lucas alone. The comma is a sufficient

separator between the dates unless there are page numbers, in which case a semicolon must

be used.4

5. Multiple works by same author in same year:

Studies of precautionary saving in response to earnings risk include Cantor (1985),

Skinner (1988), Zeldes (1989), Kimball (1990a, 1990b), and Caballero (1991), among

others ...

The two Kimball papers would be listed alphabetically by title in the bibliography with a

notation as to which paper is 1990a and which is 1990b.

6. Citations of papers with many authors:

Becker et al. (1994) analyze U.S. cigarette consumption using micro panel data from a

survey of individuals.

This usage is standard when there are more than three authors. Sometimes, all names are

written out on the first citation, then the “et al.” form is used for subsequent references.

Note the period on “al.” which is an abbreviation for the Latin word “alia,” meaning

“others.”

7. Citation of forthcoming paper:

Some examples from the literature include Jones (1976), ... and Wright (forthcoming).

See also the reference-list entry for this situation below.

8. Citation appears in parenthetical expression:

Another example occurs when parents expect to be supported by their children in old

age; each additional dollar of wealth accumulated by parents reduces the amount of

support given to them by their children (for a theoretical model, see, e.g., O’Connell

and Zeldes [1993]).

When the citation is already within parentheses, use brackets around the year rather than

two sets of nested parentheses.5

9. Referring to a specific part of a source:

Ausubel (1991, 70, table 11) reports that roughly 25 percent of customers avoid

finance charges by always paying off their accounts in full each month.

Note commas separating parts of the reference. No “p.” is required before the page number.

10. Short direct quotation:

Greene (1992, 19) reports several indicators of past delinquencies that banks obtain

from credit bureaus and use as indicators of default probability when processing credit

card applications. He estimates a probit equation for approval of an application and

reports that “the most significant explanatory variables are the number of major

derogatory reports and credit bureau inquiries (negative) and the number of open trade

accounts (positive).”

The last sentence might more commonly be written as:

In an estimated probit equation for approval of an application, “the most significant

explanatory variables are the number of major derogatory reports and credit bureau

inquiries (negative) and the number of open trade accounts (positive)” (Greene 1992,

19).

In either case, always give the page number for any quotation. Note again that no footnote is

required for the citation. (In fact, this citation occurs within a footnote.) If the passage

quoted had been longer, it would have been appropriate to use a single-spaced and doubleindented format rather than quotation marks. In this case, the citation (same format) comes

at the end of the indented paragraph(s). It is worthy of note that in the two entire issues of

the JPE used for these examples there are no quotations long enough to require the indented

form. Economists are usually more worried about content than exact text.

11. Citation of anonymous work:

According to a recent article in the Economist (1994), inflation in China may be rising.

The word “The” is traditionally omitted from the title even though it appears on the title

page of the newspaper.These, again, are from the February and April 1995 issues of JPE. Since the JPE format for entries

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follows the “humanities” convention of chapter 15 of the Chicago Manual of Style, these entries have been

reformatted to the “science” style that has become more common in economics.

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12. Indirect citations:

Arturo Obscuro has argued that citation practice is of great importance (Obscuro 1945,

cited in Hunter 1994).

Never pretend to have read something that you have not! The ideal solution is to find and

read the original source (Obscuro). However, the constraints of working with a tight timeline

at Reed College may sometimes prevent you from being able to obtain everything that is

relevant. In such cases, you may have to rely on what someone else (Hunter, in this case)

says about it, but you must confess this to your readers by using an indirect citation such as

the one above. See also the appropriate entry below for the list of references.

Source: http://academic.reed.edu/economics/parker/citation guide.pdf