AER-MCP (American Economic Association Journals) MCP server for AI agents

The AER-MCP server provides functionality for searching and retrieving papers from the American Economic Association (AEA) with the help of large language models. It implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to enhance search capabilities for academic research.

Installation

Setup

To install the AER-MCP server, follow these steps:

git clone https://github.com/sepinetam/aer-mcp.git
cd aer-mcp
uv venv .venv

Configuration

After installation, you need to configure the MCP server. Create a configuration file with the following content:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "aer-mcp": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "/path/to/the/repo/",
        "run",
        "aer_mcp.py"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Make sure to replace /path/to/the/repo/ with the actual path to your cloned repository.

Usage

Once installed and configured, the AER-MCP server can be used to search for academic papers from the American Economic Association. The server utilizes language models to provide better search results for economic research papers.

Related MCP Servers

For additional academic search capabilities, you might also be interested in:

How to add this MCP server to Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > MCP and click "Add new global MCP server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "cursor-rules-mcp": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "cursor-rules-mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explictly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.