Tools for making a gretl database using the contents of a given
source area of the data repository at www.economagic.com

1. Background:

Visit the economagic website.  On the main page you will see, for
instance, a heading:

   U.S. Government 
      Federal Reserve, Board of Governors 
         Interest Rates: 40 series 
	
Clicking on "Interest Rates" brings up the page 
http://www.economagic.com/fedbog.htm.  

"fedbog" here is the relevant source identifier.  Click on the first series
name, "Federal Funds Rate", and you will be taken to: 

http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/fedbog/fedfund
                                          ------
										  
2. What the script does ('$' stands for the command prompt):										  

   $ ./magicget fedbog
   
This will (attempt to) obtain a listing of the data series under this
heading, from the economagic site, and create a pair of files, e.g.
fedbog.bin and fedbog.idx.  The first is a gretl binary database, the
second its associated index file.  Watch for any error messages that may
be spewed out.  Open the resulting .idx file in a text editor and check it
over: besides any failings of my script, there are some anomalies in the
economagic data (e.g. corrupt series dates).

For use with gretl, you'll have to truncate any variable names in excess
of 8 characters.  You may also have to edit some excessively long
descriptions of the series.

If all goes well, finish up by putting the .bin and .idx files where gretl
can find them (e.g. /usr/local/share/gretl/db -- though your installation
may vary).

Allin Cottrell
cottrell@wfu.edu  

