The Replication Network

This is a "shout out" for The Replication Network.

The full name is, The Replication Network: Furthering the Practice of Replication in Economics. I was alerted to TRN some time ago by co-organiser, Bob Reed, and I'm pleased to be a member.

What's TRN about:

"This website serves as a channel of communication to (i) update scholars about the state of replications in economics, and (ii) establish a network for the sharing  of information and ideas. 

The goal is to encourage economists and their journals to publish replications."

There's News & Events; Guest Blogs; Research involving replications in economics; and lots more.

Hats off to TRN. We need more of this!

© 2016, David E. Giles

"Using R for Introductory Econometrics"

Recently, I received an email from Florian Heiss, Professor and Chair of Statistics and Econometrics at the Henrich Heine University of Dusseldorf.

He wrote:

"I'd like to introduce you to a new book I just published that might be of interest to you: Using R for Introductory Econometrics.

The goal: An introduction to R that makes it as easy as possible for undergrad students to link theory to practice without any hurdles regarding material, notation, or terminology. The approach: Take a popular econometrics textbook (Jeff Wooldridge's Introductory Econometrics) and make the whole thing as consistent as possible.

I introduce R and show how to implement all methods Wooldridge mentions mostly using his examples. I also add some Monte Carlo simulation and present tools like R Markdown.

The book is self-published, so I can offer the whole text for free online reading and a hard copy is really cheap as well."

The link for the online version of Florian's book is http://www.urfie.net/.

What you`ll find there are two versions of his 365-page book (Flash and HTML5) that you can read online; and all of the related R files for easy download.

Florian has used the CreateSpace publishing platform to produce an extremely professional product.

Using R for Introductory Econometrics is a fabulous modern resource. I know I'm going to be using it with my students, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about econometrics and R at the same time.

If you're after a hard copy of the book you can purchase it for the bargain price of US$26.90 directly from CreateSpace, or from Amazon.

© 2016, David E. Giles

February Reading List

Here's a suggested reading list for February:

• Casey, G. and M. Klemp, 2016. Instrumental variables in the long run. MPRA Paper No. 68696.
• Coglianese, J., L. W. Davis, L. Kilian, and J. H. Stock, 2016. Anticipation, tax avoidance, and the price elasticity of gasoline demand. Journal of Applied Econometrics, in press.
• Falorsi, S., A. Naccarato, and A. Pierini, 2015. Using Google trend data to predict the Italian unemployment rate. Working Paper No. 203, Dipartimento di Economia, Università degli studi Roma Tre.
• Harris, D., S. J. Leybourne, and A. M. Robert, 2016. Test of the co-integration rank in VAR models in the presence of a possible break in trend at an unknown point. Working Paper No. 5 01-2016, Essex Finance Centre, Essex Business School, University of Essex.
• Inoue, A. and G. Solon, 2010. Two-sample instrumental variables estimators. Review of Economics and Statistics, 93, 557-561.
• Kim, N., 2016. A robustified Jarque-Bera test for multivariate normality. Economics Letters, in press.

© 2016, David E. Giles