ECON 641

Syllabus Winter 2009

Data Sets

• SCHOOLS.TXT
  The four columns give observations on the following variables for 49 Central Ohio school districts, taken from the Columbus Dispatch, 2/6/00:
  
  • Observation Number
  • Number of Proficiency Standards Met
  • Expenditures per pupil on staff, materials, and building maintenance
  • Median family income in school district

• PANEL.TXT

• BOSTON.TXT Revised 3/1/99 for easy use with EViews. Contains both data source info and variable names on line before data.

• MILDATA.TXT
  The 6 columns contain draft era (1969) data for 20 observations on the following 6 variables:
  • RACE = 0 for nonblack, 1 for black
  • ED = 12 for 12 or fewer years of education, 13 for 13 or more.
  • YOS = years of service on active duty for military personnel with 4 or more years of service, and who have therefore reenlisted voluntarily, where 4-5 years is encoded 4, 6-7 is encoded 6, etc.
  • MIL = military enlisted population with this RACE, ED, and YOS
  • CIV = estimated comparably aged, military-eligible civilian population.
  • PAY = ratio of average military compensation (from DOD) to median civilian pay (from Civilian Population Survey, aka CPS), for this group.

  For details, see J. Huston McCulloch, "An Economic Analysis of the Volunteer Military," Report of the President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (GPO, 1971), pp. II-9-1 to II-9-19.

  Since this is not a time series, you must select "undated" when you create the new workfile with File (on EViews window) - New - Workfile, and must enter 1 in the "Start Observation" box, and 20 in the "End Observation" box. Then in the workfile window, select Procs - Import - Read Text/Lotus/Excel. Click on MILDATA.TXT in the folder where you have saved it. Place the variable names RACE ED YOS MIL CIV PAY in the variable name box, and click OK. You probably want to save this as MILDATA.WF1 for future reference.

• BASEDATA.TXT Quarterly data from St. Louis Fed FRED data base on
  • YR -- Year, as decimal fraction: 1959Q1 = 1959.00, etc.
  • BASE -- US Monetary Base (Board of Governors Base, adjusted for reserve requirement changes, seasonally adjusted, $B, nominal, FRED Monthly series BOGAMGSL aggregated to quarterly averages.)
  • P -- Price Level (GDP Deflator, chain-type, seasonally adjusted, 2000 = 100, FRED series GDPCTPI)
  • y -- Real GDP (Seasonally adjusted annual rate, billions of chained 2000 dollars, FRED series GDPC96)
  • R -- 3-month Treasury Bill interest rate, %/yr (secondary market, FRED monthly series TB3MS aggregated to quarerly averages)

• WOOSTERTEMP.TXT Annual mean temperatures at Wooster OH Experimental Station, 1900 - 2005, with "missing" codes entered for 2006-2008. NCDC 3220 SOM data obtained via U. Ill. UC MTAC. (Missing value for 2/63 interpolated from adjacent values.)

• VOTING.TXT Rubinfeld Voting Data Set, from Table 11.8 of Pindyck and Rubinfeld, 4th ed. Downloaded from SHAZAM website at http://shazam.econ.ubc.ca/intro/school.txt, with variable names added in first line. There are 95 observations. YESVM indicates how an individual voted on a school tax referendum (1 = yes), as determined by an exit poll. PUB12 indicates if the individual had 1 or 2 children in public schools, PUB34 indicates 3 or 4, and PUB5 indicates 5 or more. PRIV indicates a child in private school. YEARS is the length of time the voter has resided in the district. SCHOOL is 1 if the voter is a school teacher or employee. LOGINC is log of income, and PTCON is a property tax index that may or may not be the same as log(PRICE) on p. 313.

• MYRI.TXT
  1/23/01 -- This file now seems to be loaded correctly, with no initial blank line. An initial blank line, if present, leads EViews to think that 59Q1 is missing (NA), that 99Q2 is 99Q3, etc, and to ignore the actual data for 99Q3. This results in 162 instead of 163 observations in your regressions "after adjusting for missing observations." This can be corrected without editing MYRI.TXT by setting the "Skip Rows" option on the second EViews import data dialogue page equal to 1, or alternatively you can edit the blank line out of MYRI.TXT with a text editor such as Notepad before importing it into your EViews workfile. Make sure you have all 163 observations for full credit on HW.

  The 5 columns contain the following data series, obtained from the Federal Reserve of St. Louis FRED data bank.
  

  • Date. 1959Q1 = 1959.00, 1959Q2 = 1959.25, etc.
  • Real M1, 1996 dollars, quarterly average of monthly figures. FRED Series M1SL, averaged over quarters, then deflated by the chain-indexed GDP deflator, ie divided by FRED series PGDPCI/100.
  • Real GDP, 1996 dollars, chain-indexed. FRED series GDPCI.
  • 3-month Treasury Bill interest rate, percent per annum, discount basis. FRED series R3MOTB, averaged over quarters.
  • GDP Deflator Inflation from previous quarter, computed as 400 times the change in the naural logarithm of FRED series PGDPCI. (CPI-U inflation 11/58 to 2/59 substituted for 1959Q1.)