Affiliations: [a] 1005 Fox Hollow Road, Stroudsburg, PA 18360, USA.
E-mail: timh@ptd.net
| [b] 601 West 113th Street, #12G, New York, NY 10025, USA.
E-mail: cgrenfro@modler.com
| 601 West 113th Street, #12G, New York, NY 10025, USA. E-mail:
cgrenfro@modler.com
Abstract: This paper addresses the need for an efficient standard data exchange and
transfer format for economic and social time series data that provides not only
numeric observations but also sufficient documentation for users to be able
easily to understand their properties. The paper proposes that the goal in the
development of such a standard should be to permit these data to be downloaded
into a user's environment in such a way as to be immediately usable without the
need for local editing. It is argued that to achieve this goal will require that
data producers and distributors, as well as developers of econometric and
statistical software packages, honor and support such a standard. A candidate
standard is identified, the TSD format, originally developed in 1984 and used
since by a number of organizations and econometric software packages. However,
the argument is made that to support future needs in the modern Internet-based
world it will be necessary to extend this format, in the process developing
evolving data exchange protocols for both downloaded byte stream data, based
upon XML, and file transfers, based upon some extension of the TSD format.
