Random notes from the AMAs

In the AMAs (see past and future AMAs), we talked about many things. No transcript, but here’s a raw dump of the various websites that were used.

AEA Data and Code Availability Policy

https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/data/data-code-policy, and if revising a package, https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/data/revisions-policy

Restricted data

To access restricted data, the author and Editor may start here: https://aeadataeditor.github.io/aea-de-guidance/sharing-restricted-data/

If the AEA Data Editor cannot access the data, but somebody else can, we follow the “third party” policy https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/data/policy-third-party

Common documentation by Social Science Data Editors

• “The” README: https://social-science-data-editors.github.io/template_README/template-README.html

• The common policy guidelines: https://datacodestandard.org/

Better code and READMEs

Example of graphical interface to select data (and the difficulty of describing how to do that concisely):

https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

Stata package to do the same much more succinctly:

• https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/889464-wbopendata-stata-module-to-access-world-bank-data
• Package on RePEc

Similar tension between the FRED graphical interface https://fred.stlouisfed.org/ and the FRED API, which can be used via

• Stata https://www.stata.com/manuals/dimportfred.pdf
• MATLAB https://www.mathworks.com/help/datafeed/fred.fetch.html
• R https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/fredr/vignettes/fredr.html

Difficult data citations

Example of restricted access data with DOI, and a long list of DOIs (problems with data citations):

https://www.casd.eu/source/statistique-structurelle-annuelle-dentreprises-issue-du-dispositif-esane/

and a possible solution.

Versioning of Stata packages

https://github.com/labordynamicsinstitute/ssc-mirror/

Improving yourself

Draft tutorial on how to self-check reproducibility (and also how to ensure it in the first place), still quite preliminary right now:

https://larsvilhuber.github.io/self-checking-reproducibility/

Crediting others (software citations)

R package to generate a bibliography file (bib, etc.) from all the citable packages used in an R-based replication package: https://github.com/Pakillo/grateful