eco740: abstract due

As mentioned in class and on this blog its nearing time to submit your one paragraph descriptions of the topic area you intend to pursue for the "Policy Memo" or "Annotated Bibliography." A longer description of the assignment can be found in the Course Documents section of Blackboard.

To allow a bit more time I've set the deadline to Thursday Nov 16th at 11pm. Please submit your one paragraph abstract electronically via Blackboard and then click on 'Assignments' and follow the instructions there.

A later draft outline will be due on November 30th, and the final project paper is due December 12th.

Those of you doing a 'Policy Memo' will want to get data from the IMF's International Financial Statistics Browser. The library is in the process of purchasing a Hunter site license, but until I hear it is operational you can also login and very easily get a free 5-day trial to download all the data you need. See the comments below for some more details on navigation on this site.

Comments

Jonathan C said…
A student wrote with the following question:


> Hi prof,
> I opened the free trial account and I can log on. I tried to get the balance sheet of Mali in The PDF form but I could not because the PDF icon was not in the right corner of the screen. Could you please explain me how to get it?


ANSWER:
When you first login you will see at the bottom of the screen "PDF and documents". Click on 'Country Tables' and then on the latest month (November 2006) and choose your country of interest. That will give you a PDF printout of the latest data (annual for the past 5-6 years) that will be very useful later for keeping track of variable definitions.

To get earlier data you will have to download the data in XLS format. Just go back to 'Browse' and then the country tables and select the data you want to download. First specify the retrieval period and data frequency (click on 'Change' next to where it says 'Retrieval period'). Then select the variables you will want to work with. You might as well select everything at this stage and then clean things up on the worksheet you download. To select every variable click on the little blue checkmark next to 'Retrieve'. Next click on 'Retrieve.' Next choose the data format (choose Excel). Give your data file a description to find this data again later on the IFS site (e.g. 'Mali annual") and then click on 'Retrieve' again. After a short while you'll be taken to a screen with a link to the Excel file to be downloaded. You're done..

The PDF printout of the page of a the book in which the data was published will be useful as you sort through which variables you want to keep.
9:26 PM
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