Search Rules

This search engine helps you find documents on the AEA Annual Meeting Papers website. Here's how it works: you tell the search service what you're looking for by typing in keywords, phrases, or names in the search box. The search service responds by giving you a list of all the Web pages in our index relating to those topics. Documents are sorted by the number of keyword hits, so that the most relevant documents appear first. Search terms found in the title, keywords, or description are given additional weight.

How To Use:

1. Type your keywords in the search box; separate words with spaces.
2. Press the Search button to start your search.

Here's an example:

1. Type teaching in the search box.
2. Press the Search button or press the Enter key.
3. The Results page will show you all sessions containing a paper or subject on teaching.

Tip: Don't worry if you find a large number of results. In fact, use more than a couple of words when searching. Even though the number of results will be large, the most relevant content will always appear at the top of the result pages.

Phrase searching:

You can link words and numbers together into phrases if you want specific words or numbers to appear together in your result pages. If you want to find an exact phrase, use "double quotation marks" around the phrase when you enter words in the search box. Pages containing the exact phrase will be ranked highest and will appear at the top of the list of hits.

Case Sensitivity:

When in doubt, use lowercase text. When you use lowercase, the search service finds both upper and lowercase results. When you use upper case text, the search service finds only upper case.

Example: When you search for aids, you'll find aids, Aids, and AIDS in your result pages. However, when you search for Aids, only pages containing Aids will appear in the search results.

Including or excluding words:

To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box.

Example: To find pages containing the word America, but not the word Latin, enter +America -Latin.

Expand your search using wildcards (*):

By typing an * at the end of a keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings.

Example: Use input*, to find input, inputs, inputted, inputting, and input-output.