The major raw material used by economists who engage in applied research
or analysis is the vast range of economic time-series which are published by
many different bodies in all developed countries. The very range of sources
and definitions gives rise to many problems before any consideration is given
to matters of economic theory. "Datagrubbing" has traditionally taken a major
part of the time devoted to any individual research project. With many
economists engaging in overlapping areas of research and analysis there has
been considerable duplication of effort in the past in developing suitable sets
of data. Even if the producers of the raw material, economic time-series, do
not see it as their duty to produce consistent data in suitable machine readable
formats ( can be read by a computer directly without retyping) covering a
reasonable span of years, there is clearly an advantage to economists in cooperating
in this onerous task.
This article examines the range of economic time-series which are available
in computer databases or databanks in Ireland and considers how best these
data can be made available to users of micro-computers. Section 2 of the paper
sets out the background to the development of these databases and Section 3
describes their current scope and contents. Section 4 discusses the future
development of databases. Section 5 examines some technical considerations
on how best to access these data and Section 6 presents proposals as to how
these data, currently only available on one mainframe computer, could best be
made available to users of micro-computers in Ireland
