Open Econometrics

This is a project of the Open Economics WG.

Since computing power and data storage have become cheaper and more easily available, the number of empirical papers in economics has increased dramatically. Despite the large numbers of empirical papers, however, there is still no unified and machine readable standard for saving regression results: The Open Economics WG would like to fill this gap by proposing and promoting an open standard for econometric results.

How Open Econometrics adds value
Like machine readable formats for bibliography (e.g. bibtex), the new standard would faciliate the dissemination and organization of existing results. Ideally, this project would offer an open storage where researchers can submit their regression results (for example in an XML type format). The standard could also be implemented in a wide range of open source econometric packages and projects like R or Repec.

From a practical perspective, this project would greatly help to organize the large pile of existing regressions and facilitate literature reviews: If someone is interested in the relationship between democracy and economic development, for example, s/he need not go through the large pile of current papers but can simply look up the relationship on the open storage: The storage will then produce a list of existing results, along with intuitive visualizations (what % of results are positive/negative, how do the results evolve over time/i.e. is there a convergence in results). From an academic perspective, the project would also facilitate the compilation of meta-regressions that have become increasingly popular.

As an applied economist, my feeling is that such a standard and app would greatly help disseminating and organizing academic results, while speeding up research processes at the same time. If OKFN establishes such a standard, we could become the lead organization when it comes to combining open data with academia.

Examples
The format should be as simple as possible. Open Econometrics follows the XML format, which allows to store standard multiple regression results (See Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992)) and more complex two-stage least-squares regressions (Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001)).

Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992)
Click here for original table and here for machine readable Open Econometrics format.

Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001)
Click here for original table and here for machine readable Open Econometrics format.

Ideas for front-end
Visual search of regression results