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This was converted in 2020 from the file at the Victoria Freenet. Their copy had been converted in 1997 from “Freeport menu” and I have to assume the original source is a 1993 Usenet post.
Victoria Freenet copy of econ-resources-faq version 3
Anyway, an odd error is pervasive through the document: clusters of bytes are missing. A group of a few characters here and there are obviously missing in virtually every section of the document. The source of this error is unknown. Did the conversion to HTML lose these characters? Was the file corrupted over the decades? Most frustratingly, I have not found another source of the FAQ v3. There is not a pristine copy to replace those missing letters. Other editions are available on the web, but not this 1993 version.
For this text/gemini conversion I have joined together prose lines and smartened punctuation. To avoid confusion with markup characters, I have replaced the author’s asterisk * and plus + with a plus-minus ± and a dagger †respectively. Though Gemini encourages hyperlinks to other resources, I have not linked the document’s Gopher (or FTP, Telnet, or e-mail) locations because they are long dead.
All of the following sections are the original document text converted to Gemini format.
Bill Goffe
Dept. of Economics and International Business
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, MS 39406
bgoffe@whale.st.usm.edu
October 26, 1993
± 1. INTRODUCTION
± 2. NEW THIS VERSION
3. INTERNATIONAL, U.S. MACRO, AND U.S. REGIONAL DATA
± A. Economic Bulletin Board (EBB)
± B. EconData
C. New England Electronic Economic Data Center (NEEEDc)
4. OTHER DATA
A. Luxembourg Income Study (LIS)
B. National Archives Center for Electronic Records
C. Social Security Administration (OSS-IS)
†D. FedWorld
†E. Public Domain Financial Data
†F. Census
†G. EDGAR
5. WORKING PAPER ARCHIVES AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SERVICES
± A. NetEc (BibEc & WoPEc)
± B. Working Paper Archive (Wash. Univ., St. Louis)
†C. Feminist Economists Discussion Group Archive
6. GOPHERS
± A. Economics Gopher at Sam Houston State University
B. Computational Economics Gopher
C. ClioNet (Cliometric Society)
± D. National Bureau of Economic Research Gopher
E. Academe This Week (Chronicle of Higher Education)
†F. Washington Univ. at St. Louis Econ. Dept.
†G. RiceInfo
†H. University of Michigan Economics Dre
†I. Communications for a Sustainable Future
†J. SunSITE
7. UNIVERSITY AND RESEARCH LIBRARY CARD CATALS
Aearchibraries in General
†B. Library of Congress
8. PROGRAM LIBRARIES
± A. Netlib
B. Statlib
± C. Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Statistical Library
9. EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
± A. Iowa Electronic Markets
10. USENET NEWSGROUPS
± 11. MAILING LISTS
†12. USEFUL BOOKS, PROGRAMS, AND RESOURCES ABOUT THE INTERNET
This is my third stab at this document. I am very interested in any corrections, suggestions, omissions, and hints anyone might ha Hopefully, a refined version will be appearing in The Journal of Economic Perspectives along with a description of the Internet and the tools used to access it. Thus, any suggestions you might have may reach a large audience.
± While relatively few economists use the Internet, there is a surprising amount of very useful information on it. For instance, there are two very extensive sets of macro data, a bibliography of some 20,000 working papers in economics, household surveys from 21 countries, three interactive electronic markets, 34 maili lists and two Usenet newsgroups. By the end of this year, it should include the SEC EDGAR database.
I apologize for any crosslistings. However, it appears that economists use many different lists, so to reach the broadest audience, crosspostings are unavoidable.
Some of the information is not as complete as I would wish. Further, some of the resources I have not investigated thoroughly and I cannot vouch for them. While I catalog many mailing lists, I have little information about the volume and types of discussions.
Most of the resources I was able to find deal with the United States. Leads on information on other countries would be appreciated.
†I would like to acknowledge many ple who have commented and made suggestioon previous versions of this document. Without their help, there would be fewer resources listed and the existing descriptions would be more difficult to read.
Notes:
†New resources in this draft are denoted with a †in the first column, while changes to resources metioned previously are denoted with a ± in the first column.
This service is an outgrowth of a dial-up bulletin board offered by the U.S. Department of Commerce. It contains more than 2,000 files from the Departments of Commerce, Labor and Treasury, the Federal Reserve and other agencies. The EBB is currently offered on thenrnet in two places. The first is a telnet interface to the EBB at the Department of Commerce, and the second is at a library gopher at the University of Michigan.
EBB at the Commerce Department
± This resource began charging for their services on Oct. 1. Charges for Internet telnet access follow.
± Timed Charges:
± Annual subscription fee $45
± Credit for connect charges $20
± 8AM - noon (Eastern) $24/hour
± noon - 6PM $18/hour
± 6PM - 8AM (& holidays, weekends) $6/hour
± Flat Fees
± Up to 1 hour/day $250/year
± Up to 4 hours/day $400/year
The current telent interface is basically that used for the dial-up bulletin board. Thus, one must capture on the information from the screen or use a bulletin board type download (such rmit). I have not tried the later and can offer no advice. To capture all screen data on a Unix system, one can do "telnet ebb.stat-usa.gov | tee ebb.data" where tee takes the screen data and places it in the file ebb.data.
± FTP and gopher access may be available at this time; plans were to charge by the amount transferred.
± Limited guest accounts are available, use "gu"s the password. You are limited to 20 minutes of connection time and not all files are available.
Most information is in four areas: the bulletin system (which describes how to use the system), the file system (which contains files), the trade promotion system,and the utilities system (which sets passwords, terminal types, etc.) Basic information on the system can be found in the bulletin system (entered by typing "B") under "3", while a listing of files can be found in the file listing system (entered by typing "L") under 17.
Data comes in several formats. Some comes in DOS self extracting files, some in .PRN (so it can be used in spreadsheets or software that can import spreadsheet data), and some in a specialized format.
TELNET: ebb.stat-usa.gov
EBB at the University of Michigan Library Gopher
The University manually downloads files daily from the dial-up EBB. It is said to contain 700 files; I have no information on the different numbers of files contained by the two versions of the EBB. Information on file formats and the system in general can be found under the heading "Current Business Statistics" and "EBB and Agency Information and misc. files." As with the Commerce Department location, data comes in several different forms. A convenient listing of all directories for the EBB can be found in a file called "Contents of the Ulibrary Gopher" at the "University of Michigan Libraries" (described below).
One good educational use of this gopher is recent press releases concerning economic statistics. I frequently use it just before class to check the most recent numbers.
The directory directly above EBB at the University of Michigan contains a variety of useful information.
TELNET: una.hh.lib.umich.edu (login as "gopher" and move to /Social Science Resources/Economics)
GOPHER (direct): una.hh.lib.umich.edu /socsci/Economics
GOPHER (indirect): USA/Michigan/University of Michigan Libraries/Social Science Resources/Economics
This database, collected by INFORUM, a project building an inter-industry model of the U.S. economy, processes a wide variety of macro data and places it in a common format. Data includes the National Income and Product Accounts, balance of payments, flow of funds, CPI, PPI, the Penn World Trade Tables (permission needed), International Financial Statistics (if your organization is a member of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research), blue pages from the Survey of Current Business, and state and local data including employment, earnings, GSP and state personal income.
The data is accessed by programs (only for Pcs) provided by this project and it can easily be output to ASCII or into a spreadsheet format. The data is also compressed with pkzip, and they provide this and similar programs as well.
For introductory information, see "Instruction/contents.doc" and "Instructions/guide.doc".
± The program that retrieves data (PDG) is relatively straightforward, but let me add my own experiences. First, you may need to change the path to the help files in the g.cfg file. Assuming that you’re in a directory with one of the unzipped data files, start the program by typing "pdg". Then, a return will allow you to start normally. The command "look" allows one to survey the data in that file (additional commands are found on the bottom of the screen that allow you to print the data to the screen or graph it). One leaves the look command with an escape. To print the data to an external file in columns, use the "matty" command. After typing "matty" and the full file name you choose, you’ll be prompted for the series names that can be obtained with "look". Don’t separate series names with commas and be sure to end the command with a semicolon. The output of matty lists dates in the first column, but you’ll need to modify the fractions used to denote months and quarters. Finally, you can easily plot data to the screen to get an approximate idea of what it looks like.
TELNET: info.umd.edu (login as "gopher" and move to /Educational Resources/Economic Data)
GOPHER (direct): info.umd.edu:/Educational Resources/Economic Data
GOPHER (indirect): USA/Maryland/University of Maryland /Resources/Economic Data
FTP: info.umd.edu:/info/EconData
This database specializes in data on the New England economy. It carries all historical data published in the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s New England Economic Indicators (some 90 vables from 1969 for all states and some metropolitan areas) and GSP data for the New England area from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data is in .PRN format, so it can be read directly by Lotus or Quatro.
FTP: neeedc.umesbs.maine.edu
INFORMATION: Jim Breece (breece@maine.maine.edu)
This project brings together 66 household surveys from 21 countries into a common database to make studies of international economic comparisons easier. For instance, it includes Current Population Surveys from the U.S., French Surveys of Income, and a Hungarian Income Study. The average survey has approximately 9,000 households with more than 20,000 members. To maintain confidentiality and restrictions on use, the data remains on the host computer in Luxembourg and researchers run jobs remotely on that system through electronic mail. Users must first register to use the database.
They also have an annual database of 100 macro indicators available on floppy disks to put the household surveys in context. This database also contains rules on taxes and transfers in each country to make international comparison mengf. The datasets are well documented, and workshops and newsletters help the researcher to use this complex database.
INFORMATION: Tim Smeeding (smeeding@suvm.bitnet)
Caroline de Tombeur (eplisjr@luxcep11.bitnet)
The National Archives has a branch devoted to the storage of electronic records from many federal entities. Of interest to economists are records from the Bureaus of the Census, Economic Analysis, and Labor Statistics, the Civil Aeronautics Board, Department of Transportation, IRS, SEC, and Social Security Administration. While the records are not available over the Internet (at least not yet), detailed information about them, including a listing of “data files” and ordering information for the data files (generally available only on 9-track tape reels or 3480 tape cartridges) are available. Currently, some 6,200 data files out of more than 14,000 available are listed in a rapidly growing list. Some of the data files are old, while some are relatively recent. Some entities have only a small selectio ta, while for others, the listings are more complete. Unfortunately, the tapes are relatively expensive at either $80.75 or $90.00 (depending upon the medium) with additional tapes at $24.50. One can hope that a less expensive on-line database is not too far in the future. Since a comprehensive list of files here is impossible, the interested researcher should examine them. Much more information about this service can be found in the directory listed below.
FTP: ftp.cu.nih.gov:/NARA_ELECTRONIC
Directions: anonymous FTP, but press the return key for the password
The Social Security Administration Office Support System Information Server (OSS-IS) recently has placed their internal system on the Internet as an experiment. Data includes monthly benefits, current operating statistics, history of benefits paid and income datothe aged. Key files are "index" which describes the files available, and "orsindex_txt", which describes files from the SSA’s Office of Research and Statistics, which are likely to be of the most interest for economists. Using these files, one can fairly quickly locate the desired data.
The e-mail interface comes from Netlib, so an introduction can be obtained by sending e-mail to the address listed below with "send index" in the body of the message. For FTP, the files "index" and "orsindex_txt" are available in the "pub" directory.
E-MAIL: info@ssa.gov
FTP: soaf1.ssa.gov:/pub
INFORMATION: info@ssa.gov
†This site provides an entry-way from the Internet to many U.S. Government Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) that one usually contacts via a phone and modem. While there is relatively little material directly related to economics that cannot be obtained more directly, it is a useful connection to many databases. Access is only through telnet.
†TELNET: fedworld.gov (new address; the old one is fedworld.doc.gov)
†This site allows those with financial data they would like to share to place it at a common site. Thus, some caution might be advised since the data may not be “official.” Details about this site can be found in the README file and a list of the extensive set of files at this site can be found in the file named "ls-lR".
†FTP: dg-rtp.dg.com:/pub/misc.invest
†A common site for U.S. and some Canadian Census information is located at this gopher. This gopher provides links to other gophers that actually contain the data. The material is not coordinated, so some searching may be in order. I was particularly impressed with the collection at the University of Missouri—they have data for all U.S. counties and cities.
†GOPHER (direct): riceinfo.rice.edu:/Information by Subject Area/Census
†GOPHER (indirect): USA/Texas/RiceInfo
†This database, an expanding one, covers fillings by U.S. public compan de to the SEC. It covers such things as 10K, 10Q, annual, and quarterly reports. In all, the SEC receives 10 million pages a year of such data. Plans are for 3,000 companies to file electronically into this database by the end of this year, with all 15,000 companies required to file with the SEC eventually required to file into EDGAR.
†Currently, this database is available through Mead Data in either inconvenient locations or at very considerable expense. By the end of this year (according to the New York Times), it will be available at no cost over the Internet. This service will be provided and funded by the NSF, the NYU Stern School of Business, and Internet Multicasting Service, run by Carl Malamud, an economist at the Board of Governors.
†While not yet available, such a resource stands to be an extremely valuable resource for some economists. As more information becomes available, I’ll report it here.
± This gopher site has two parts: BibEc, a bibliography of working papers in economics, and WoPEc, an electronic collection of working paper. BibEc includes some 20,000 entries from 243 different working papers series. These series include those major of major universities and research institutions. Coverage dates from 1988, with the exception of NBER working papers (all are cove), D from 1981, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London from 1991. Searches can be made by keywords. This is one of the most valuable resources for economists on the Internet. Fethy Mili, a librarian at the University of Montreal, is to be commended for entering the data, as is Thomas Krichel, for making it available.
± WoPEc contains a collection of working papers, which can be retrieved electronically. All are Unix compressed PostScript files.
± Finally, the FTP site has the Backus and Kohoe data from the AER, ’92 (see the pub/NetEc/DatEc directory).
± TELNET netec.mcc.ac.uk (login as "netec" and change to "Economics")
GOPHER (direct): uts.mcc.ac.uk:/Economics
GOPHER (indirect): Europe/United Kingdom/University of Manchester/Economics/NetEc
± FTP: netec.mcc.ac.uk
± INFORMATION: netec@uts.mcc.ac.uk
± This electronic archive of working papers in ecmics is set up by the Economics Department of Washington University in St. Louis. It uses software developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where literally thousands of working papers in physics are stored. This archive is best accessed through gopher, although email and FTP access is possible as well. Papers are grouped in 21 subject areas with abstracts and different methods of searching for papers are available. Papers may be submitted in any format via e-mail and binary files can be submitted via FTP. Currently, there are relatively few papers in the archive, but its ease of use should encourage more entries.
± The parent gopher, the gopher of the Economics Department of Washington University at St. Louis, contains a wealth of interesting material. It is the next to last entry on econ-wp’s menu.
TELNET: econwpa.wustl.edu (login as "gopher")
GOPHER (direct): econwpa.wustl.edu
± GOPHER (indirect): USA/Missouri/Washington University - St. Louis/Washington University in St. Louis Departmental Gopher Servers/Economics Department/Economics Working Paper Archive
EMAIL: econ-wp@econwpa.wustl.edu
Directions: in the subject of the letter, "help" will obtain introductortion
†The mailing list of this group, described below, has an archive of working papers, bibliographies and old discussions. It is reached only via email. For an index of material, send email to the listed site with "index femecon-l" in the body of the letter, while "get femecon-l guide", sent the same way, will list the services available. Finally, "help" will cause a general guide to using listserv to be sent to you.
†EMAIL: listserv@bucknell.edu
± This gopher contains a variety of material that might be useful for teaching, such as summaries of the 1990 Census, the proposed U.S. budget for 1994, and the CIA World Factbook. Further, it contains an extensive of connections to data sources and in particular to all other known economics gophers. As a result, it is THE gopher one should search first. Itso includes a list of economists and their email addresses. Finally, it has a very extensive collection of TeX information.
GOPHER (direct): niord.shsu.edu:/Economics
GOPHER (indirect): USA/Texas/Sam Houston State University/Economics
This gopher is affiliated with the journal Computational Economics. It contains connections to other economics gophers, information on a few books and some working papers. It also contains information on submitting papers electronically to the journal.
GOPHER (direct): gopher.sara.nl:/Computational Economics
GOPHER (indirect): Europe/Netherlands/SARA/Computational Economics
Sponsored by the Cliometric Society, this gopher contains information of interest to economic historians. It features an electronic directory of the memberships of a variety of business and economic history organizations. It also contains a collection of more than 50 course syllabi from economic history courses, abstracts from Cliometric sessions at ASSA meetings, a list of papers presented at Cliometrics Conferences (1961-1993), and a growing set of historical data series. Early in 1993, the Society plans to create an expanded server with multiple topical listservs, “real time” conferences and expanded data sets. Thi seer will offer spial concentration on issues related to the historical economic impact on glal change. (Sam Williamson, who runs ClioNet, kindly provided this description.)
TELNET: clionet.cas.muohio.edu (login as "gopher")
GOPHER (direct): clionet.cas.muohio.edu
INFORMATION: lliamson (shwillia@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu)
± Currently, this gopher contains several things of interest: the Penn World Trade Tables (versions 5 and 5.5), the Survey of Consumer Finance (which will fit on three floppies), trade and immigration data from Abowd and Freeman, and a list of NBER working papers and reprints (which must first be uudecoded then uncompressed; the ultimate size is some 2.5 megabytes). The later is also available at BibEc.
± One can only hope that someday NBER working papers will be available here or at another working paper archive.
TELNET: nber.harvard.edu (login as "gopher")
GOPHER (direct): nber.harvard.edu
FTP: nber.harvard.edu:/pub/nber
This electronic version of the Chronicle of Higher Education is available via gopher. Perhaps the most useful item is the full listings of all job advertisements from the Chronicle, but it also summarizes the articles in the print version, and contains various miscellaneous items.
GOPHER (direct): chronicle.merit.edu
GOPHER (indirect): USA/General (also directly on more than 60 university gophers)
†This gopher is closely tied to the Working Paper Archive at Washington Univ. It contains a number of links to other useful gophers, both economic and of interest to economists, such as the Federal Register, archives of mailing lists on SAS and statistics, access to the UIC Stat archives (described below) and many Internet resources.
†GOPHER (direct): wuecon.wustl.edu port 671
†GOPHER (indirect): USA/Missouri/Washington University - St. Louis/Washington University in St. Louis Departmental Gopher Servers/Economics Department/Economics
†This gopher is part of a project to link together gopher materials in a number of subject areas. One area of interest to economists is a section titled "Economics and Business". While many other economic gophers list roughly the same information, this may be of interest. Note that this same gopher has substantial Census information listed in another area (and described above).
†GOPHER (direct): riceinfo.rice.edu:/Information by Subject Area/Economics and Business
†GOPHER (indirect): USA/Texas/RiceInfo
†This gopher is run by Hal Varian and Jeff MacKie-Mason and it contains a variety of information, such as addresses of economists (including email ones), some bibliographies, data (particularly Dow-Jones and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture), errata to some Varian books and working papers on the economics of the Internet.
†GOPHER (direct): gopher.econ.lsa.umich.edu
†GOPHER (indirect): USA/Michigan/University of Michigan Libraries/Other Gophers/University of Michigan/Economics Department
†This gopher contains two directories that might be of interest: Post-Keynesian Thought and Economic Forum. The former contains material of interest to researchers in that field and the later is more general, but in the general theme of this gopher. It contains a directory titled "Dollars-and-Sense", but it is currently empty.
†GOPHER (direct): csf.colorado.edu
†GOPHER (indirect): USA/Colorado/Communications for a Sustainable Future
†This site (sponsored in part by Sun Microsystems) contains current government documents that might be useful for policy analysis. Examples include information on NAFTA, the Administration’s health care plan, White House Press Releases, reinventing government, and the proposed federal budget. Most of this material will be found in "Sunsite Archives" and others in "US and World Politics", which is in "Sunsite Archives".
†GOPHER (direct): sunsite.oit.unc.edu
†GOPHER (indirect): USA/North Carolina/University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ogphre/SUNsite archives)
†TELNET: sunsite.oit.unc.edu (login as "gopher"; you may need to supply your terminal type)
± The most current list of libraries accessible over the Internet is maintained by Billy Barron (who started it), Marie-Christine Mahe, Lou Rosenfeld and Barry Bouwsma. It lists roughly 450 such libraries.
Note that many libraries can also be reached via gopher (typically under a title like “Libraries”). The following files describe how the libraries can be reached via telnet and the type of indexing software they use.
± FTP: ftp.utdallas.edu:/pub/gopher/Libraries (see files "About-Library-Guide" and "Instructions" and directory "by.place")
± GOPHER (direct): gopher.utdallas.edu:/Library On-Line Catalogs
± GOPHER (indirect): USA/Texas/University of Texas - Dallas
†The Library of Congress has set up a gopher that includes a wealth of information, which includes their card catalog. Theysf tensive set of links to other resources (the economics oriented ones are generally described elsewhere here) and substantial information on the U.S. Government, including Congress. It _appears_ one can ushr photocopy service long distance.
†GOPHER (direct): marvel.loc.gov
†GOPHER (indirect): USA/Washington DC/Library of Congress
†TELNET: marvel.loc.gov (login as "gopher")
Netlib is a numerical software library with approximately 50 megabytes of code. The routines, mostly in Fortran, are generally of high quality (many were developed at U.S. national labs or by professional numerical analysts). Packages include Linpack, Eispack, and their new successor, Lapack.
± Netlib is available via e-mail and FTP and even on some economics gophers. For introductory material on Netlib, use the e-mail method by writing "send index" in the body of your message addressed to one of the sites listed below. You will receive an introduction to Netlib and its libraries and how to obtain routines from them.
GOPHER: wuecon.wustl.edu (described above)
niord.shsud/ftGeways to Economics Information (described above)
FTP:
± netlib2.cs.utk.edu (U.S.)
research.att.com:/netlib (U.S.)
unix.hensa.ac.uk:/pub/netlib (Europe)
draci.cs.uow.edu.au:/netlib (Pacific)
E-MAIL:
netlib@ornl.gov (U.S.)
netlib@research.att.com (U.S.)
netlib@unix.hensa.ac.uk (Europe)
netlib@nac.no (Europe)
netlib@draci.cs.uow.edu.au (Pacific)
Statlib is a system similar to Netlib (in fact, ises roughly the same software) for statistical software. Major holding include algorithms from Applied Statistics, numerous classic datasets (although few are economic), software for Minitab and S, and a variety of other software under a heading labeled "general."
For the email interface, send the phrase "send index" in the body of your message.
E-MAIL: statlib@lib.stat.cmu.edu
GOPHER (direct): lib.stat.cmu.edu
GOPHER (indirect): USA/Pennsylvania/Statlib (also listed directly on some gophers)
FTP: lib.stat.cmu.edu
± This statistics library contains a variety of software (much of it in SAS), but it lacks an up to date inx, making searching it a bit difficult. However, an index can be reached at the Washington Univ. Economics Gopher (described above) undere heading "UIC Stat Archive" and files can be transferred from there as well.
± FTP: uicvm.cc.uic.edu:/uicvm
Directions: must do a "cd" to uicmv before a directory listing is shown
± GOPHER: via Washington Univ. at St. Louis Econ. Dept. (described above)
± INFORMATION: Barry Grau (u42054@uicvm.cc.uic.edu)
± This service is run by the Accounting and Economics Departments of the University of Iowa. It currently consists of three electronic exchanges: the Iowa Earnings Market (which trades contracts on the EPS of five corporations), the Iowa Economic Indicators Market (which trades contracts on the CPI and the US$/Mexican peso exchange rate), and one on the passage of NAFTA. In the past, these departments ran the well known 1992 Iowa Political Stock Market, which traded contracts based on the outcoohe 1 Printi Election. The liquidation value of all contracts is determined by the value of the underlying fundamental on a set date.
This excellent teaching tool is open only to university and college staff, faculty and students. While the purpose is education and research, trades require actual money (f $5 to $500 may be invested). The developers feel that by using real money for trades, there is an increased motivation to learn about the underlying fundamentals. There are no commissions or fees and trading is continuous.
FTP: umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu:/pub/iem/trman.txt (Trader’s Manual)
" " /q&a.txt (Short Introduction)
EMAIL: iem@scout-po.biz.uiowa.edu
Directions: mail addressed here will send the Trader’s Manual to you.
± Usenet is a decentralized discussion system running on tens of thousands of cooperating computers around the world (much of the traffic runs over the Internet). It covers almost 2,000 subjects in areas called newsgroups. The estimated number of readers ranges in the low millions and traffic each day is approaching 50 megabytes. Some mailing lists “mirror” Usenet newsgroups and vice-versa.
In many ways, Usenet has it own culture and the new user is wise to read carefully before posting messages. The newsgroups news.announce.newusers and news.newusers.questions are for those new to Usenet. Since it runs on a variety of systems, consult your local site for information on how to access it.
Newsgroup Topic
comp.soft-sys.spss
comp.soft-sys.sas
comp.soft-sys.shazam
sci.stat.edu Statistics and Edu (these groups are new and may be hard to find)
sci.stat.math Statistics and Math
sci.stat.consult Statistics and
sci.math.stat Statistics Discussion (may be eliminated due to the new sci.stat groups)
sci.op-research Operations Research in Economics (Moderated)
sci.econ.research
sci.econ Discussions in Economics (often dominated by current political economy questions; a good place for economic education if you’re patient)
Mailing lists work as follows. Software on a computer run by the organizer (or moderator) of the list sends mail to all members of the list when it receives mail. For obvious reasons, the term mail exploder is sometimes used for such software. On some lists, the moderator will approve mail to be sent to all list members. Thus, to send mail to all members, you need only write to one address: the list address.
†When using a mailing list, please follow “netiquette:”
While not part of netiquette, the value of mailing lists should be approached like other many other sources of information, such as a newspaper or a journal. Much of the material may not be of interest, but occasionally something very useful may cross your path.
Note that in ALL cases, you subscribe and unsubscribe from a list NOT by sending e-mail to the list itself (which means it goes to ALL the members of the list), but to some special address that deals with subscriptions. Sending mail to the list itself marks you as a novice who hasn’t taken time to carefully read directions. It also irritates list members (numbering into the hundreds) who receive useless mail. One hint: when subscribing to a list, you’ll receive information on how to unsubscribe. Keep it and use it.
The following is a list of e-mail discussion groups. I have organized the following mailing lists around the type of software (listserv, majordomo, mailserv, mailbase and Internet-style) used to run them so that directions can be put in one place.
In general, I know little about these lists other than the fact that they exist (in fact, this list is basically an edited sion of the e-mail I received in acknowledgment when I subscribed to the lists). Traffic varies; in fact, on some, it is very close to zero and on others, it vas bstantially. Where I do know something more, I’ve added it beneath the name of the list and its address.
LISTSERV
To subscribe to a list run by listserv, send an e-mail message to LISTSERV@wherever, _NOT_ to the list itself. If you send mail to the list itself, it will be sent in turn to all members of the list. This, obviously, should be reserved for messages you want all members of the list read and potentially respond to.
For example, to subscribe tt CARECON, you’d send e-mail to LISTSERV@YORKVM1.BITNET (or LISTSERV@VM1.YORKU.CA).
In the body of your e-mail message, you should write the one line message:
subscribe CARECON your name
Note that your name is typically your first and last name.
± To cancel a subscription, use signoff list where list is the name of the list. Again, e-mail should be sent to listserv at the site that houses the list. Finally, help on these and other commands can be obtained by sending a one line message with "help" in it.
Messages to the list itself should be sent to CARECON@YORKVM1.BITNET, for example. Any such message will be sent to all members of the list.
List of the Society of Computational Economics
CSEMLIST@HASARA11.BITNET
Has a number of announcements of meetings and some calls for papers.
List of the Faculty of Economics, University of Amsterdam, NL.
CORRYFEE@HASARA11.BITNET
Caribbean Economy
CARECON@YORKVM1.BITNET (or @VM1.YORKU.CA)
Research in Economic Education
ECONED-L@UTDALLAS.BITNET (or @VM.UTDALLAS.EDU)
A discussion of teaching and research in economic history
ECONHIST@MIAMIU.BITNET (or @MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU)
Discussao sobre economia brasileira
ECONOM-L@BRUFSC.BITNET
The Electronic Journal of Finance
FINANCE@TEMPLEVM.BITNET (or @VM.TEMPLE.EDU)
Economic Nonlinear Dynamics List
NONLIN-L@NIHLIST.BITNET (or @LIST.NIH.GOV)
Workshop on Information Systems Economics
WISE@UICVM.BITNET (or @UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU)
Eastern Europe Business Network
E-EUROPE@PUCC.BITNET (or @PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU)
Post-Keynesian Thought
pkt@csf.colorado.edu.
trade@csf.colorado.edu.
Community and Rural Economic Development Interests
URALDEV@KSUVM.BITNET (or @KSUVM.KSU.EDU)
Economic Problems in Less Developed Countries
ECONOMY@TECMTYVM.BITNET (or @TECMTYVM.MTY.ITESM.MX)
Political Economy
Pol-Econ@SHSU.BITNET (or @SHSU.edu)
± Discussions from Usenet’s sci.econ.research are “gatewayed” to this group.
Labor Economics
LABOR@SHSU.BITNET (or @SHSU.edu)
Gophers devoted on Economics
Egopher@SHSU.BITNET (or @SHSU.edu)
Business Libraries Discussion List
BUSLIB-L@IDBSU.BITNET
Traffic is said to be heavy.
Regional Science Information Exchange
REGSC-L@WVNVM.BITNET
± Feminist Economics Discussion List
± femecon-l@bucknell.edu.
± SAS Discussion
± SAS-L@UGA.BITNET (or @UGA.CC.UGA.EDU)
± A high volume list that would appear to be quite useful to SAS users.
± SAS Public Access Consortium (deals with Census data)
± SASPAC-L@UMSLVMA.BITNET (or @UMSLVMA.UMSL.EDU)
± PEN-L (Progressive Economists Network)
± PEN-L@USCVM.BITNET (or @VM.USC.EDU)
± MEMSNET (Mineral Economics and Mgmt Society)
± LISTSERV@UABDPO.BITNET (or @UABDPO.DPO.UAB.EDU)
± Net-Happenings
± net-happenings@is.internic.net
± While not related to economics, this list is a good description to what is happening on the Internet. I came across some items on this list here.
MAJORDOMO
± Majordomo is another program that organizes mailing lists. Commands for subscribing and unsubscribing are similar to those used with a listserv except that thees n given at the end of the subscription line. Further, rather than sending e-mail to listserv at the site that houses the list, it should be sent to majordomo@csn.org.
Local Economic Development
econ-dev@csn.org
A rather philosophical list with fairly heavy traffic.
Texts prepared by the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses
ibase-texts-l@ibase.br
± RISKNet — Discussion of Risk and Insurance issues.
± RISKnet@bongo.cc.utexas.edu
MAILSERV
When using a mailserv, requests for a subscription or canceling a subscription should be sent to mailserv@wherever. To subscribe, write "subscribe list" in the body of your note where list is the name of the list you wish to subscribe to. To cancel a subscription, use "unsubscribe list"
International Political Economy
ipe@csf.colorado.edu
MAILBASE
When using a mailbase, send your e-mail to mailbase@wherever and use "join list your name" in the body of the text to join a list, and use "leave list" to c a scrii.
CTentre for Computing in Economics list for academic economists
cti-econ@mailbase.ac.uk
± Economic History E-mail Conference
± HISTORY-ECON@MAILBASE.AC.UK
± Experimental Economics
± ECONOMICS-EXPERIMENTAL@MAILBASE.AC.UK
INTERNET STYLE
± With Internet style lists, one sends requests to sign up and leave a list to the list maintainer. Simply add the suffix "-request the list name and e-mail it.
Teaching of Economics (not research in economic education)
tch-econ@vax1.elon.edu
†Communications Privatization
†com-priv@psi.com
†This list discusses issues concerning the privatization of the Internet. This is an area in which economists might have a substantial impact.
†“The Whole Internet User’s Guide and Catalog,” Ed Krol, O’Reilly and Associates (1-800-998-9938), Sebastopol CA, ISBN 1-56592-025-2, $24.95, 376 pages. This may be the most complete book on the Internet. The resource section in the back is quite useful. Highly recommended. Can be found in many bookstores.
†“The Internet Companion,” Tracy LaQuey with Jeanne C. Ryer, Addison-Wesley, Reading MA, ISBN 0-201-62224-6, $10.95 196 pages. This lighter introduction to the Internet assumes less than Krol. Can also be found in many bookstores.
†“The Internet Guide for New Users,” Daniel Dern, McGraw Hill, ISBN 0-07-016511-4, $27.95, 570 pages. I have not read this new book, but have seen generally positive reviews of it. Since Dern is the editor of Internet World magazine, it should be knowledgeable. Given its length, it may be more mplete than Krol.
†“Navigating the Internet,” Richard Smith and Mark Gibbs, SAMS Publishing, ISBN 0-672-30362-0. This is another book I have not see, but I have read positive reviews about it. The authors have considerable Internet experience.
†“The Internet Passport: NorthWestNet’s Guide to Our World Online,” Jonathan Kochmer and NorthWestNet, NorthWestNet, $29.95, 515 pages. Once again, I have not read this book but have read positive reviews concerning it.
†Gopher client software
†Gopher is a very popular tool on the Internet and is much more efficient than accessing gopher sites with telnet. Further, file transfer is much easier with client software. Packages for many different hosts can be found here.
†FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu:/pub/gopher.
†uuencode/uudecode
†This pair of programs are very useful when used in conjunction with email. Uuencode takes a binary file (such as a word processing file or a program) and converts it to text so that it can be emailed. Uudecode than converts it back to binary. Using this pair of programs, researchers can collaborate by emailing binary data or word processing files. If one host is an IBM mainframe, be sure to use the -x option.
†FTP: ftp.shsu.edu:/tex-archives/archive-tools/uue
†GOPHER: Sam Houston State Economics (described above):/Network Are Tools/uue
†gzip:
†This new program can uncompress many files (note that this is typically denoted by a .Z suffix) found on the Internet. More information on this topic can be found below in the document by David Lemson.
†FTP: ftp.shsu.edu:/tex-archive/tools/info-zip
†GOPHER: Sam Houston State Economics (described above):/Network Archive Tools/gzip
†Scott Yanoff’s “Internet Services List”
†Scott Yanoff produces a list of interesting resources on the Internet. While few of them are economics (and those that are covered above) many are quite interesting and useful. One I find particularly interesting is the University of Illinois weather gopher — you can find weather forecasts for any part of the country. Another interesting resource is books.com, a bookstore on the Internet. For those that live in rather small towns like me, this is a very valuable service.
†Yanoff’s list is well worth lookingor those new to the Internet.
†FTP: csd4.csd.uwm.edu:/pub/inet.services.txt
†John December’s “Information Sources: the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication”
†This document has a broader concept than Yanoff’s; rather than listing just resources, December lists a number of documents as well, such as electronic guides to the Internet, and software sites. The breadth is quite remarkable. Like Yanoff’s list, those new to the Internet will find it quite useful.
†FTP: ftp.rpi.e/pub/communications/internet-cmc.txt
†File Compression, Archiving, and Text<->Binary Formats:
†This document, by David Lemson (lemson@uiuc.edu) details the numerous methods of file compression used on the Internet and elsewhere.
†FTP: ftp.cso.uiuc.edu:/doc/pcnet/compression.
†While this document is primarily about resources on the Internet of interest to economists, there are several resources not on the Internet that might be of interest. I hasten to add that I have not tried any of these and am only reporting what I have read elsewhere.
†Dallas 214) 0169
†neapos (612) 340-2489
†St. Louis (314) 62124
†I understand that the St. Louis Fed has a wealth of historical data (including money data, obviously), while the Minneapolis Fed has FOMC minutes, and speeches and testimony of Fed officials.
†I understand that though CompuServe’s Knowledge Index and IQuest (they offer a number of sometimes overlapping databases), the Economic Literature Index is available after hours. It is available during working hours through Dialog, but it is quite expensive. One hopes that someday membership in the AEA will privileges and members won’t have to pay for access to this databsase.
End of Document