Library News for Economics

New Database- ASSIA

The Social Work Library added a new database at the beginning of the summer called ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts). You can access it campus-wide.  It's on the CSA/Illuma interface, and in addition to economics it covers health, social services, psychology, sociology, politics, race relations, and education.

More digital resources added

We have added some electronic resources to our collection that may be especially useful to the economic historians…

·        The Times [London] Digital Archive (1785-1985) 

·        New York Times, Historical (1851-2003) 

·        Wall Street Journal, Historical (1889-1989)

We’ve also ordered microfilm for the first 68 editions of The Economist.(1843-1914)  This will replace the almost useless ‘microcard’ format and fill in some missing issues.

In addition, we’ve added several items to the Reference Collection at Olin Library:

·         An Eponymous dictionary of economics: a guide to laws and theorems named after economists.  Edited by Julio Segura and Carlos Rodríguez (Rodriguez) Braun.  E. Elgar, 2005 (c2004).

·         We also added the electronic version of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History (http://www.oxford-economichistory.com/ )

WU Libraries Technology Changes

This fall we will be seeing a number of changes in technology in the WU libraries. The most notable shift is the end of free printing at the University Libraries effective October 20th. Here are the new rates:  8 cents (single sided) and 12 cents (double-sided). Charges for photocopying will remain the same: 12.5 cents per copy if using a copy card; 15 cents per copy if paying with cash. Please visit the WU Libraries Technology Changes website for additional information.

New database through WRDS

Eventus, an event studies database, is now available through WRDS.

• To use Eventus, you must have a WRDS account.   
• To request a WRDS account, you must be a faculty member or working on a specific project for a faculty member. Here's the link: http://wrds.wharton.upenn.edu/wrdsauth/account_req.shtml 
• For a complete list of databases available through WRDS:     http://wrds.wharton.upenn.edu/demo/databaselist.shtml

The business school’s subscription to WRDS includes the databases listed below.

For details on dataset permissions within each group, see My Permissions in my.WRDS (you must have a WRDS account to use this feature):

• COMPUSTAT North America
• CRSP
• ComScore
• I/B/E/S
• NYSE TAQ
• Thompson Financial

Free access data sets:

·         Bank Regulatory ·         Blockholders ·         CBOE Indexes ·         DMEF ·         Dow Jones ·         FDIC ·         Fama French, Momentum, and Liquidity ·         Federal Reserve Bank Reports ·         PHLX ·         Penn World Tables ·         SEC Disclosure of Order Execution ·         TRACE

Eventus performs event studies using data read directly from CRSP stock databases or pre-extracted from any source. The Eventus system includes utility programs to convert calendar dates to CRSP trading day numbers, convert CUSIP identifiers to CRSP permanent identification numbers, and extract event study cumulative or compounded abnormal returns for cross-sectional analysis.

Eventus provides user control over estimation periods and cumulative return windows, a choice of raw, comparison period mean adjusted, market adjusted or market model abnormal returns. Simple statements allow the researcher to run a complete event study, from reading the CRSP stock database to print results, with a program as short of as four lines.

WRDS has created several Eventus web queries that allow the user to execute different Eventus programs without the need of knowing the details about Eventus syntax. Below is a short description of the web queries that are available:

• Basic Event Study includes four of the most common event Studies:
• Basic Event Study (Daily and Monthly) executes an event study with daily or monthly data centered on a single date for each firm. It is the most common and simple event study.
• Fama French Basic (Daily and Monthly) executes an event study that uses the Fama French factors as benchmark.
• Eventus Alternative runs an event study using either the "Calendar-time Portfolio" or the "Ibbotson Rats" Approach both for the market model and the Fama-French Approach.
• Output for Cross-sectional Analysis web query produces a SAS dataset containing the cumulative abnormal return for each firm and specified window for further cross-sectional analysis.
• Event Parameter Apporach web query performs a joint estimation of the parameters and the abnormal returns.