Tools and resources for economists

1
U10988 The Economics of the Internet (ENET)

• Lecture 3
• Tools and resources for economists
• on the Internet

The Economics of
the Internet Guy Judge, February 2004
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Todays objectives

• to inform you about some of the key tools and
  resources available to economists on the Internet
• to consider appropriate strategies for locating
  relevant information on the Internet
• to discuss how to ensure that information found
  is both accurate and up to date (validating the
  quality of the information)

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the Internet Guy Judge, February 2004
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Literature

• Judge Computing Skills for Economists Chapter 2
  pp 42-47 and Chapter 6 pp 202-240
• www.wiley.co.uk/judge
• Notes and links available from my ENET site
• http//userweb.port.ac.uk/judgeg/ENET/links3.h
  tml

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the Internet Guy Judge, February 2004
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Tools and resources

• Web pages and tools for locating them
• Mail discussion lists
• Electronic newsletters
• Current awareness services (alerts)
• Other tools and resources

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Some important distinctions

• information and meta-information (information
  about information)
• peer reviewed and un-reviewed information
• free and to pay for information

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the Internet Guy Judge, February 2004
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Whats on the web for economists?

• News and other current information
• Government and inter-governmental web pages (e.g.
  OECD, IMF)
• Company and other non-governmental organization
  web pages
• Data
• Economics journals on-line
• Reports, working papers and conference proceedings

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the Internet Guy Judge, February 2004
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Whats on the web for economists? (2)

• On-line software or software support
• Academic department and individual economists
  home pages
• Teaching and learning material, including
  glossaries, quizzes etc.
• Tools for locating the above gateways and
  directories, search tools, bibliographic
  databases
• plus all the usual general facilities

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How do you know where to find information on the
web?

• From a printed source (book, handout, leaflet
  etc.)
• By word of mouth recommendation
• From an e-mail
• From a subject gateway or directory
• By following a hypertext link on the WWW
• By using an Internet search tool

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the Internet Guy Judge, February 2004
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Document types

• Documents may be
• HTML formatted
• pure text (ASCII)
• PDF files
• other file types - e.g. PowerPoint, Excel, Word,
  etc.
• For all but the first two types you may need
  suitable reader software as well as your browser

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the Internet Guy Judge, February 2004
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Saving HTML files

• Note the distinction between
• the underlying source HTML document (marked up or
  tagged text)
• what you download if you save an HTML file
• and
• the screen image via the browser
• what you get if you print the page

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Some key web sites for economists Gateways and
portals (1)

• Resources for Economists on the Internet (RFE) -
  from Bill Goffe (USA) supported by the AEA.
• WebEc WWW Resources in Economics - from Lauri
  Saarinen in Finland
• both are mirrored at the MCC
• See my links page for the URLs to all these sites

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the Internet Guy Judge, February 2004
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Some key web sites for economists Gateways and
portals (2)

• SOSIG Social Sciences Information Gateway
• Inomics specialist economics search engine
• BUBL catalogue of selected Internet resources

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the Internet Guy Judge, February 2004
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Some key web sites for economists Gateways and
portals (3)

• MIMAS Manchester Information and Associated
  Services (access to data, software, bibliographic
  material, on-line journals etc.)
• BIDS Bath Information and Data Services (access
  to bibliographic material and links to on-line
  journals)

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News and current information

• For example
• BBC news www.bbc.co.uk
• Guardian www.guardian.co.uk
• New York Times www.nytimes.com
• FT www.ft.com

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News and current information (2)

• The Economist www.economist.com on-line version
  of the weekly magazine - some articles available
  to non-subscribers
• The Dismal Economist US on-line newsletter for
  economists
• Check too the list of news sources and Economics
  in the Papers links at Economics LTSN

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UK Government sites

• Government gateway
• www.ukonline.gov.uk
• Treasury
• www.hm-treasury.gov.uk
• Bank of England
• www.bankofengland
• DTI
• www.dti.gov.uk

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Data

• National statistics
• www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/
• Europa
• europa.eu.int/comm/economy_finance/
• IMF
• www.imf.org
• World bank
• www.worldbank.org/data

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Other helpful sites for data

• STAT-USA
• www.stat-usa.gov/
• Economic Report of the President
• w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2001/erp.html
• economagic.com
• www.economagic.com/
• European macro data from Manfred Gartner's "A
  Primer in European macroeconomics" website
• http//www.fgn.unisg.ch/eumacro/macrodata/

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Business links

• CBI
• http//www.cbi.org.uk/home.html
• Biz/ed links to FTSE 100 companies
• http//www.bized.ac.uk/listserv/companies/coml
  ist.htm
• Yahoo Business and Economy Directory
• http//uk.dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/

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Economics journals online

• Via the library web site
• http//www.libr.port.ac.uk/ROADS/subject-lis
  ting/journals/economics.html
• Direct from the publishers
• e.g. CJO (Cambridge UP - includes Econometric
  Theory)
• Access via an outsourced intermediary delivery
  company
• e.g. IngentaJournals http//www.ingenta.com
• CatchWord http//www.catchword.co
  m/
• ScienceDirect http//www.sciencedirect
  .com/
• Redirected access following a bibliographic
  database search
• e.g from IBSS - the International Bibliography
  of the Social Sciences
• http//www.lse.ac.uk/collections/IBSS/

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Working papers and pre-prints

• NetEc (including BibEc, WoPEc and NEP)
• http//netec.mcc.ac.uk/NetEc.html
• Inomics
• http//www.inomics.com
• Economics Working Paper Archive (EconWPA)
• http//econwpa.wustl.edu/wpawelcome.html

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Fun sites

• JokEc (Jokes about economists and economics)
• http//netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html
• Dilbert
• http//www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/
• Ted Goffs Mostly Business cartoons
• http//www.reuben.org/goff/main.asp

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The web contains a huge amount of information

• Two problems
• finding the information
• (locating - digging)
• verifying the quality of the information
• (validating)

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Locating information on the web

• search engines (spiders, crawlers etc.)
• Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot, Google...
• Note Inomics for economics documents
• meta search agents
• locate.com, metacrawler.com
• subject directories or gateways
• Yahoo or the more specialist RFE or SOSIG

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Search engines - myth 1

• When you are using Google, or a similar tool, you
  are
• searching the Web.
• NO!
• In fact, when you use a search engine, you are
  searching a
• proprietary database (or index) that contains a
  lot of
• information about the Web, including copies of a
  certain
• number of Web pages. But you are not actually
  searching
• the web itself.

The Internet for
Business Economists Guy Judge, September 2003
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Search engines - indexes

• No search engine index covers all the pages on
  the
• web so you need think about both the
  extensiveness
• of a search engine index and its relevance to the
• search that you wish to undertake.
• A search engine index is created using a program
• variously called a spider or a crawler that
  automatically
• searches over the web to build up the index.

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Search engines - bots and agents

• Bots and agents are special programs that can be
  used for building up a search engine database.
• They can operate autonomously (i.e. without
  needing a person to control them) and with some
  degree of intelligence (they can make decisions
  and take action based on these decisions).

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The hidden web

• many search tools only track down text or
  meta-text - they cant find other file types e.g
  images, video clips or perhaps even just PDF
  files
• the hidden web is a lot larger than the visible
  web
• using a search engine is like a drunk looking
  for his lost keys under a streetlamp

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Search engines - myth 2

• All search engines are alike
• No.
• They may have a similar appearance but each has
  a different personality.
• Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses

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Meta search engines

• Meta search engines search over several indexes
  simultaneously
• examples
• locate.com
• metacrawler.com

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Number of hits versus relevance

• Do you want
• literally thousands of links, of variable quality
  and relevance
• OR
• just a few really useful links?

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Search engines - myth 3

• If you found it yesterday, you will find it
  again today.
• NOT NECESSARILY
• The Web is dynamic. If it looks useful, bookmark
  it - or even print it !

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Search engines - myth 4

• Search engines are only there to help you.
• NO!
• They also want to make money, sell advertising,
• and spin you off to other services (e- shopping
• etc.)

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Successful search strategies

• choose a relevant tool for the resource you are
  seeking (might not be a search engine)
• think carefully about suitable keywords
• narrow or expand searches by
• Boolean operations (and/or)
• truncating text strings
• limiting the scope by country, date of document
  etc.
• learn how to interpret the results

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Defining your search

• Are you looking for
• A particular web site
• Data
• Academic papers (published or in draft form) on a
  particular topic
• General information about a topic
• The latest news ?

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Selecting an appropriate tool

• Perhaps you dont need a search engine
• maybe a directory, gateway or guide will lead you
  to what you are looking for
• or perhaps a specific bibliographic or statistics
  database
• or a specialized search tool like Inomics

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broadening and widening the scope of your search

• Boolean searching
• Truncation of terms and wildcards
• Use of quotation marks to identify exact phrase
• Restricting the date or geographic extent of a
  search
• Use of meta search tools

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Boolean searching AND

• Query I'm interested in the relationship
  between poverty and crime. Source Cohen (2001)

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Boolean searching OR

• Query I would like information about college
  or university. Source Cohen (2001)

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Boolean searching OR..OR

• The more terms or concepts we combine in a search
  with OR logic, the more records we will retrieve.
  Source Cohen (2001)

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Boolean searching NOT

• Query I want to see information about cats,
  but I want to avoid seeing anything about dogs.
  Source Cohen (2001)

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Proximity operators and thesaurus functions

• A few search engines (e.g. AltaVista) make use of
  the proximity operator NEAR
• The search will return links to sites with
  material on related topics.
• For example if you search for Web the search
  might also return hits for WWW
• SOSIG has a built in Thesaurus that will suggest
  to you alternative words to search for

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Truncation of terms and wildcards - dont be too
specific

• Interested in unemployment, the unemployed,
  unemployable etc?
• Search for unemp or unemp

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Advanced searching

• With advanced searching you may be able to
  combine several logical operators Source Cohen
  (2001)
• e.g. Query I want to learn about cat behavior.
• Search (cats OR felines) AND behavior
• (NB some words have different US spellings!)

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Use of symbols or a template

• Sometimes the search engine will use symbols for
  the Boolean operator Source Cohen (2001)
• e.g. Query I'm interested in dyslexia in
  adults.
• Boolean logic AND
• Search dyslexia adults

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Interpreting the results

• Results may show
• URL
• page description
• author
• organization
• relevance rating (how is this determined?)
• date

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Assessing the quality of web resources (1)

• Are the aims of the web site clear? What its
  primary function?
• Is it clear who is the author of the web site?
  Can they be trusted to provide reliable,
  up-to-date and unbiased information? Look
  carefully at the URL
• How up-to-date is the information on the web
  site? Does the web site show when the page was
  last updated?

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Assessing the quality of web resources (2)

• Examine the links - for complex or controversial
  issues external links are important, allowing you
  easily to access alternative points of view
• Use common sense - apply the same critical
  awareness that you would to an article in a
  newspaper or junk mail
• Watch out for frauds and hoaxes

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Assessing the quality of web resources (3)

• Guidance on assessing web site reliability may be
  found at
• The Internet Detective
• www.sosig.ac.uk/desire/internet-detective.html
• QUICK (Quality Information Checklist)
• www.quick.org.uk
• Evaluating web resources by Jan Alexander and
  Marsha Ann Tate
• www2.widener.edu/

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covering the costs of web pages

• public funding
• private funding - sponsorship
• advertising (banners or pop-ups)
• subscription fees
• pay-per-view (pay as you use)
• For more details see free2fee.html on the ENET
  website

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Receiving emails continued

• beware of viruses
• save and check files before opening
• filters may be available to process incoming
  messages
• (e.g. block, automatically delete, forward to
  another address or move to another mailbox
  depending on text in senders name or subject
  vacation daemon)

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Other points about email

• automated mail (discussion) lists
• JISCmail lists, Major Domo etc.
• digests and archives
• email newsletters
• e.g. Freepint, current awareness
• Netiquette, FAQs, abbreviations and emoticons
  (smilies)
• monitoring of email and legal issues

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Returned or bounced messages

• examine message header to check that correct
  address was used
• server may be down

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More on file attachments

• file types
• e.g.Word, Excel, RTF, PDF, JPG, GIF etc.
• zip files
• forwarding email with file attachments

The Economics of
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