James Buchanan

James M. Buchanan, Nobel Laureate in 1986 for his work in public choice, has passed away at the age of 93. The New York Times reports on his death here.

I recall Buchanan presenting a seminar in the Department of Economics at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) around 1990 or 1991. It was a great seminar, but what stands out most for me is the question period that followed his presentation.

A question was posed, which Buchanan answered in a clear and convincing way. An M.A. student then raised his hand and commented that he thought that the answer to the question should really be  quite different to what Buchanan had said. After thinking for a moment, Buchanan smiled, and said: "You know, I think your answer is much better than the one that I gave".

Everyone in attendance was mightily impressed - by our speaker's humility.

© 2012, David E. Giles

EViews 8

A Beta version of EViews 8 is available for users of version 7 of the package. You can get more information, and download the Beta version, here.

I've downloaded the 64-bit version of EViews 8, and I've started to play around with it. The advantage of the 64-bit version is that it can handle 120 million observations in a page, whereas the 32-bit version is limited to about 15 million observations. There are similar increases in the number of objects per workfile that can be handled. Of course, your machine must have a 64-bit OS, and lots of RAM to achieve these gains.

What else is new in EViews 8?

The list is long, but it includes the following:

• Improvements to the general interface; data handling; and graphing.
• Census X-13 for seasonal adjustment.
• Panel principal components analysis.
• Panel cointegration estimation.
• Panel causality testing.
• Heckman selection models.
• Bayesian VARs.
• Markov switching models.

And there's lots, lots more.

If you're an EViews user, take a look and see what interests you.

© 2012, David E. Giles