Econ 5243 Page

This page provides links to all important information available on this web site for those enrolled in my Econ 5243 sections this fall.

Important Information

• Syllabus
• Textbook Website This site is maintained by the James MacKinnon, one of the authors of Econometric Theory and Methods (ETM). It includes Errata, data sets, and answers to some of the problems in the book. In fact, Here. is the link to their data sets. These are in ASCII format and will have to be imported as unformatted ascii data into SAS, Gretl, or STATA.
• Verbeek's website

News

Class is cancelled on 11/30

Office Hours

Homework

1. Go to UCLA ATS and view the 'entering data movie' in the class notes section. This movie lasts about half an hour. This will be helpful especially if you are new to SAS.

2. Loading data into SAS.Go to Verbeek's website at Verbeek's data sets. Save the compressed .zip file for wages in the USA to your computer. Unzip the files and load the wages file into SAS. Note, the proper file is "wages1.dat". It is an ascii file. The others are in either STATA or EViews format (which SAS won't read). Using Proc Print or the data browser, verify that the dataset is read into SAS properly. Note, to use these data sets in Gretl, you'll follow the same procedure. First convert it from ASCII to .CSV, then import it into Gretl.

3. Go to UCLA ATS and view the 'entering data movie' in the class notes section. This movie lasts about half an hour. Enjoy!

4. Exercises 1.23 and 1.24 in ETM. 
5. Exercises 2.16, 2.23 and 2.24 in ETM. 
6. Exercise 3.3 in ETM. My gretl 
7. Complete the following exercise in Stata or gretl. Homework

Data Sets

Below you will find some general links to data sets used by Davidson & MacKinnon, Wooldridge, and Verbeek. If I make specific assignments using a particular dataset, I'll try to post a link to it here.

• The consumption data set from ETM in Stata format Here. The .csv file is here.
• The tbrate.dat data set is here.
• The wages1.csv data set is here
• Table 5.1 from Greene's book F5.1.csv.
• Table 12.3 from ITPE2 Table12.3.csv.

Links to other stuff

• Jeffrey Wooldridge textbook site
• Latex and related links. Here you will find some links to sites that will help you get started with LaTex, if you are so inclined. If you are just getting started using TeX the go first to Getting Started. LaTex (pronounced Lay-Tek) is actually a package that makes TeX (pronounced Tek) much easier to use. According to the Tex User Group FAQ "TeX ix a typesetting system written by Donald E. Knuth, who says in the Preface to his book on TeX (see books about TeX) that it is 'intended for the creation of beautiful books - and especially for books that contain a lot of mathematics'." If you ever plan on writing professional looking papers or books (dissertations) then I highly recommend that you learn to use this system. For example, your textbook was typeset by the authors using TeX.

On Reserve

I have asked that three books be placed on reserve in Edmon Low Library. These are Estimation and Inference by Davidson and MacKinnon, A Guide to Econometrics by Peter Kennedy, and The Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Econometrics by Judge et al. Once they have made their way to the reserve desk you may go to the main library reserve on the first floor of the library and check them out for a couple of hours.

Want SAS?

Ask your department's unit assistant or your department head.

Learning SAS

• Links to online documentation for SAS version 9.
• SAS Class notes from UCLA Academmic Technology services. This is a great site with a wealth of information about SAS and other statistical software. Follow the links and you will find some movies about various aspects of SAS.
• Official SAS documentation from the SAS Corporation's documents online.
• Also from the SAS document site is the 2400+ page ETS Manual in .pdf format. This file is big, but if you do econometrics with SAS, you'll want to consult this manual for the details of estimation as well as for specific commands you may need.
• Also from the SAS document site is the 1000+ page IML Manual in .pdf format.

SAS Examples

• Reading data into SAS: U.S. Gasoline Market data. Example 1
• Sample least squares IML program: U.S. Gasoline Market data. Example 2
• Sample least squares IML program: U.S. Gasoline Market data. Example 3
• Here is the data set that goes with these examples: Data. This is in a comma separated value format.

Gretl Resources

• Gretl homepage. Gretl. The MS Windows executable that will install Gretl onto your Windows computer is Here. Also listed are some datasets that you may wish to install.
• Introduction to Econometrics using Gretl. This is a book that is being prepared for use with another textbook. It gives you a pretty good introduction to using Gretl. Gretl Book. Check back regularly because this book is in production and I expect to update it frequently early in the semester.

Stata Resources

• The Stata Website

• Resources for learning Stata

  • Loading web based data into STATA. Unfortuantely, this only works from Internet Explorer (or other web browsers that support Microsoft's .mht format) at this time.

• Introduction to Stata
• Some of you have asked me, "Why aren't we using SPSS?" Although SPSS is particularly adept at analysis of variance, it is not as well suited for the robust kinds of analyses that I think you should be using. Hence, I picked STATA, which is relatively good at this sort of thing and still offers a reasonably powerful engine for doing the things that SPSS does. Version 9 of STATA made some significant strides in this area. For a comparison of SAS, SPSS, and STATA (older version) see UCLA's software comparison.

Page last modified Monday, September 18, 2006.