Computer Workstations for Applied Economics Research

本方案提交国家自然科学基金社会经济科学部主办的FY-92仪器设计竞赛。麻省理工学院经济系内的应用经济学研究，特别是在货币和财政政策、金融经济学、劳动经济学和发展中国家的经济规划领域，需要对大型数据集的处理和统计分析以及相关的预测和模拟活动提供计算支持。本提案将为应用经济学教授及其研究助理提供具有足够存储和计算能力的科学工作站，以开展本研究计划。在过去，研究计划仅限于可以在个人计算机上执行的项目，或者有大型主机计算的大量外部预算的项目。根据这项建议提供的工作站将大大扩大研究方案的灵活性，使研究助理能够更早地接触到大型数据集的分析，并允许以前无法利用现有资源进行的研究。麻省理工学院的经济系在全国名列前茅。它提出的研究类型符合美国国家科学基金会社会与经济科学部的核心目标，它对人力资源的教育和发展的潜在贡献是突出的。

This proposal is submitted for consideration in the FY-92 instrumentation competition conducted by the Division of Social and Economic Science of the National Science Foundation. Applied economics research within the Department of Economics at MIT, particularly in the areas of monetary and fiscal policy, financial economics, labor economics, and economic planning in developing countries, requires computational support for processing and statistical analysis of large data sets, as well as related forecasting and simulation activities. This proposal will provide scientific workstations for applied economics faculty, and their research assistants, with sufficient storage and computational capacity to carry out this research program. In the past, the research program has been limited to projects that could be performed on personal computers, or which have large extramural budgets for mainframe computing. The workstations provided under this proposal will expand substantially the flexibility of the research program, provide research assistants earlier access to the analysis of large data sets, and permit studies that previously could not be done with available resources. The MIT Economics Department is among the best in the country. The type of research which it proposes accords with core objectives of NSF's Division of Social and Economic Science and its potential contribution to the education and development of human resources is outstanding.