The PC corner: resources for economists on the Internet - web sites of the guide on 'Resources for Economists on the Internet'

Business Economics, Oct, 1997 by John H. Qualls

Back about 1 1/2 years ago, Mike Anderson wrote a guest column on the subject of economists and the Internet. He mentioned an on-line publication by Professor Bill Goffe of the University of Southern Mississippi entitled Resources for Economists on the Internet. Bill has just sent me an updated copy of this publication, and it contains a wealth of information about the subject.

The publication is available on the World Wide Web at over eighteen sites. The four sites listed below contain both the guide and a searchable index for it:

http://econwpa.wustl.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html

http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/EconFAQ.html

http://COBA.SHSU.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html

http://www.econ.nyu.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html

One word of warning - the guide is quite long (over 400,000 characters, or about 200 pages), so it takes a bit of time to download it, particularly if you are running at 2,400 baud, as I do over here in Saudi Arabia. Because Bill e-mailed me a copy, I did not try the above WWW addresses. However, I did try several sites mentioned in the guide and had no trouble linking to them.

There are forty-one sections to the guide, some of which are of little interest to business economists. However, there are some real gold mines in the guide, including the following:

Chapter 9. U.S. Macro and Regional Data

Chapter 10. Other U.S. Data

Chapter 11. World and Non-U.S. Data

Chapter 12. Finance and Financial Markets

Chapter 13. Economic Consulting and Forecasting Services

Chapter 32. Software Program Libraries

Chapter 37. Statistical and Computational Software

In summary, this guide may be the single best source of Internet economic information around.

INTERNET ADDRESSES FOR STATISTICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL SOFTWARE COMPANIES

I get frequent requests from my readers about information on the various econometric software packages for PCs. In my last readers' survey on software and hardware, many respondents mentioned that they would like to have more information on this subject. I was working on compiling a list of the various software packages available, but Bill Goffe has beaten me to the punch. Chapter 37 of his guide gives a comprehensive list of the packages available, a brief description of each, and the WWW/e-mail addresses of the companies marketing them. With Bill's permission, I have included the names and WWW/e-mail addresses of the twenty-three packages listed in his guide.

AUTOBOX http://darkstar.icdc.com/~autobox

BCI Data Manager Version 2.0 http://csf.colorado.edu/pkt/bci.html information: Gary F. Langer (gary.langer@syslink.mcs.com)

Aptech (GAUSS) http://www.aptech.com/ Information: info@Aptech.com

Estima (RATS) http://www.estima.com Other Support: estima@estima.com

GAMS http://www.gams.com Information: gams@gams.com

Laissez Faire Software (BETA) Information: LaissezF@aol.com

Leading Market Technologies - EXPO & EXPO/SE http://www.lmt-expo.com/

Limdep http://wuecon.wustl.edu/limdep/limdep.html

LINDO http://lindo.com Information: info@lindo.com

Mathsoft - S Plus & MathCad http://www.mathsoft.com

MathWorks (MATLAB and SIMULINK) http://www.mathworks.com/ General Info: info@mathworks.com

Minitab http://www.minitab.com

The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd (NAG) http://www.nag.co.uk

Numerical Recipes http://nr.harvard.edu/nr/nrhome.html

Quantitative Micro Software http://www.eviews.com General Info and Sales: sales@eviews.com

SAS http://www.sas.com Software Sales and Marketing: software@sas.sas.com

SPSS http://www.spss.com

SHAZAM http://shazam.econ.ubc.ca Information: info@shazam.econ.ubc.ca

Stata http://www.stata.com

TSP International http://www.tspintl.com Sales Inquiries: sales@tspintl.com

VORSIM (Spreadsheet Simulation) http://members.aol.com/vorecon/vorsim.html

Wolfram Research, Inc. (Mathematica) http://www.wri.com

Xlisp-Stat Information: Luke Tierney (luke@umnstat.stat.umn.edu)

Conspicuously absent in the above are several well-known packages such as AREMOS and DRI/EPS. In fact, DRI is not even mentioned in the chapter on economic consulting and forecasting services. I have called Bill's attention to these omissions. However, my DRI and WEFA friends might like to send information on their services and packages, along with their WWW/e-mail addresses, directly to Bill. His email address is bill.goffe@usm.edu.

I will have more about economic data availability on the Internet in the next PC Corner column, based on the sites listed in Bill's guide.

COMPATIBILITY PROBLEMS WITH MICROSOFT OFFICE 97

I made favorable mention about Microsoft's new Office 97 software in last quarter's column. Although I am still favorably impressed with the software, users should be warned that there are real compatibility problems with the use of this product. The standard "default save" commands in Word 97 and Excel 97 produce .DOC and .XLS files that cannot be read by earlier versions of Word and Excel. So, users of Word 97 and Excel 97 must take pains to save their work in the older format, using the Save As menu item 2E.

In the case of Excel, this method works fine. Unfortunately, there is a bug in Word 97 that results in the document being saved in Rich Text Format, rather that as a native Word 6.0/7.0 file. To make things more confusing, Word 97 attaches a .DOC extension to the file, so that it looks like a Word 6.0/7.0 document. Normally, the .RTF extension is attached in such cases so that users don't get confused and know what they're getting - 2E.