  The Journal of Economic Literature codes classification system (JEL)
published by the American Economic Association (AEA) is the de facto standard
classification system for research literature in economics. The JEL
classification system is used to classify articles, dissertations, books, book
reviews, and working papers in EconLit, a database maintained by the AEA. Over
time, it has evolved and extended to a system with over 850 subclasses. This
paper reviews the history and development of the JEL classification system,
describes the current version, and provides a selective overview of its uses
and applications in research. The JEL codes classification system has been
adopted by several publishers, and their instructions are reviewed. There are
interesting avenues for future research as the JEL classification system has
been surprisingly little used in existing bibliometric and scientometric
research as well as in library classification systems.
