All the programs can be freely downloaded for the purpose of research and academic communication.
It cannot be resold or used for any commercial purpose.
Comments and suggestions are sincerely appreciated.
Extra Tools on Economic Teaching and Research
Economics 101 diagram / graph generator Package illustrates concepts of introductory economics by drawing graphs.
When I teach introductory and intermediate economics courses, I feel a need to generate fresh-made diagrams for lecture notes.
Also, when I design the homework and exams, I hope that a computer can automatically generate solutions.
That motives me to write some software so that instructors can generate economic graphs by just clicking mouses.
Currently the package can generate diagrams or tables related to
01. Utility function (3-D plot), indifferent curves(2-D plot)
02. Consumer’s problem: utility maximization and expenditure minimization
03. Marshallian and Hicksian demand, income and substitution effect, compensating and equivalent variation
04. Change of consumer welfare (CS, EV, CV) due to quota, subsidy, transfer (food stamp, COLA, etc.)
05. Production and costs in the short run and long run
06. Profit maximization for competitive firms and monopolistic firms
07. Nash equilibrium of static games with complete or incomplete information
11. PPF, specialization and trade in a two goods two countries world
12. Trade, tariff and welfare of a small open economy
13. Price ceiling, consumer and producer surplus, and dead weight loss
14. Real and nominal GDP, and their growth rate in a three goods economy
15. CPI and inflation in a three goods economy
16. The Fed, commercial banks and money creation
Users Guide to Econ 101 Diagram Generator.pdf
The MATLAB® to R Translator is an open-source program that helps you convert your MATLAB codes into R codes.
MATLAB and R have many similarities in grammar, which permit a literal translation from one to the other.
This translator is easy to use. All you need to do is to drag a copy of your MATLAB codes in the current folder, and select your file in a graphic user interface in MATLAB.
Then the translator will work hard and generate corresponding R codes as accurate as possible, although the translation is not perfect.
You can also improve the quality of the translator by adding new rules, and you are more than welcome to share your list of rules with us.
Users Guide to MATLAB to R Translator.pdf
The MATLAB® to GAUSS® Translator is an open-source program that helps you convert your MATLAB codes into GAUSS codes.
Currently, it is just a Beta version and the capability of GAUSS translation is less powerful, compared with my MATLAB® to R Codes Translator.
In the future, the program can be improved when the author has more spare time and resources.
Nevertheless, this translator is easy to use. All you need to do is to drag a copy of your MATLAB codes in the current folder, and select your file in a graphic user interface in MATLAB.
Then the translator will generate some GAUSS codes, and prepare a same-name text file with the extension ".gas"
Users Guide to MATLAB to GAUSS Translator.pdf
The Class Attendance Checker can reduce the workload of teaching assistants. In large classes, professors often have in-class quizzes with simple questions. The purpose is simply to check class attendance. However, it is rather time-consuming for TAs to keep records in spreadsheet gradebooks, since locating hundreds of student names in the spreadsheet is not easy. The Class Attendance Checker only requires TA to enter two letters of first name and two letters of last name in MATLAB. Then the program will search names and keep a record in the spreadsheet. For a class size of 400, this method can increase the grades input efficiency by more than 50%.
The Grades and Data Transformer is helpful when bubble sheet grades records (or electronic grades of other forms) need to be transferred to your spreadsheet gradebook. Since the names marked on the bubble sheet may not be exactly same as the names on the gradebook, the Transformer tries to match the names and/or IDs as accurately as possible. Inexact matches will be displayed on the screen. It is supposed to be more efficient than manual match.
These programs were originally written by Dr. Hang Qian of Iowa State University.
Since these codes are not available on the author's website, they were reproduced here.