The economics field has a strong tradition of working papers. 
Working papers are preliminary papers, released before publication. This enables the sharing of ideas and allows for the elicitation of feedback prior to submission to a book, conference, or scholarly journal.
Working papers provide the latest research, bypassing the delays involved in publishing within academic journals.
Working papers are authored by:
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The largest bibliographic database freely available that is dedicated to economics. RePEc is a collaborative database of working papers, journal articles and software components.
A service providing scholarly research papers, working papers, and journals in numerous social science disciplines. Uploading and searching working papers is free; a number of fee-based sources are also available.
A great place for cutting-edge economic research covering a broad variety of topics. Some papers are freely available, others not. Their full-text archive of working papers covers 1973-present.
A free, comprehensive index to economic research publications of the Federal Reserve. Covers 1970s-present.
Free, open access repository of full-text scholarly literature in agricultural and applied economics. Covers 1995-present.
EconLit, the American Economic Association's electronic database, is a comprehensive index to the literature of economics. To limit your search to just working papers, use the advanced search mode and add the following to your keyword search: (ZT "working paper").