ECON 452: Economics of Global Pandemics: Industry-Specific Research

How to Find Industry-Specific News & Reports

1. Track down "who cares?" about the industry.

• Are there industry associations? (Google industry name + association + site:.org to find them. Example: restaurant association site:.org)

• Are there government regulators? (For restaurants, think of the local Public Health agency or the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). You can Google industry name + government regulators to find some quickly.)

Once you find these organizations, look on their websites for sections called News, Reports, Resources, Education, etc. Some of these resources will only be available to members of the trade/industry association, but many will be available for free.

2. Do some advanced Google searching. Examples:

• restaurant association covid-19 site:.org

This search returns news and reports from a variety of national and local restaurant associations on COVID-19.

• "food service" covid-19 filetype:pdf site:.gov

This search returns results for PDFs on US government websites related to the phrase 'food service' and COVID-19.

Questions? Email Nancy.

Other Industry Research Sources & Strategies

Just because a report or article about an industry doesn't mention coronavirus doesn't make it not helpful (many reports take a long time to create, so there will be a time lag before information on COVID-19 appears.). 

For instance, reading about the sports industry in IBISWorld reveals tickets, concessions, and gear at sports games are a large source of revenue. If sporting games are canceled or moved online or fewer people attend, that will have an impact.

Contact Nancy for additional sources if you're researching one of these industries:

• Medical/healthcare/pharmaceutical
• Air travel
• Cruise lines
• Restaurants
• Energy
• Sports/festivals/events/conferences
• Publishing/meida
• Retail/eCommerce
• Telecom & Internet Service Providers
• Law Firms